We’ve got an LG TV being used in the office for displaying system information from a Raspberry Pi plugged into the back. The Pi is powered via USB from the TV.

We’ve used the timer to get it to switch on at 6am on weekdays, off at 5:45pm, reflecting the hours people are in the office.

It was consistently switching itself off at the wrong time, exactly two hours after it came on.

Turns out it’s a long-running bug in LG televisions.

In the forum, some found if they could get into the service menu, they could remove the 2 hour sleep setting.

Others found setting it to “hotel mode” would disable all timers – in our case this would waste a lot of power though.

Mostly for my own records:

Since one of my two Samsung 940N 19″ monitors (bought in 2006) developed a horizontal line through it, I’ve replaced it with a 23.6″ Philips 247E3LSU2, which was $168 from Officeworks.

Bigger monitors wouldn’t really fit into the space.

It’s plugged into “Calculus”, the Mac Pro. I should get a DVI-D cable to get the best picture quality out of it… amazed at how damn expensive they can be retail. I’ve ordered one from DealExtreme instead (no particular rush – the VGA cable I have may not be optimum, but it works).

I recently got a new PC at work, which for the first time has an LCD screen and ClearType turned on. Switching to my usual option of using Times New Roman for my code editing… Without judging the quality of the actual code, I must say, it’s beautiful to look at. Reminds me of that WordPress slogan, “Code is poetry.”

It’s a real pleasure to finally be working with a PC that’s fast enough for my current needs, too.

(Yeah, I’m a bit behind on getting all the points in Jeff Attwood’s Programmers’ Bill of Rights…)

Memo to self: Turn off ClearType when doing screen dumps. Well, at least the important ones.

I’ve got a Loewe Profil TV. A few years old now, but going pretty well. Apart, that is, from some scan line thingies appearing at the top of screen when it’s in 4:3 mode. It started happening when the TV (and I) moved house some time ago. I assume it got a bump.

Finally I’ve got into the Service Menu and adjusted it so they don’t appear anymore. Some people give dire warnings about the Service Menu — that you can seriously screw-up your TV if you mess with it too much.

With that warning in mind, I’ll document how to get into the Service Menu so I can remember it for later, as it’s fairly forgettable.

1. Press the Menu button on the front of the TV (not the remote)
2. Use it to scroll down to the Service Menu option
3. Press the Menu button on the remote (not the TV)

Voila, you’re in. From there you can adjust all sorts of settings. Me, I fiddled the Geometry settings. It’s a bit like all the stuff you can do with a computer monitor.

I bumped up the Vertical Amplitude a bit, and lowered the Vertical Position a tad, and it appears to be gone. (Touch wood). Certainly easier to fiddle with it yourself than have to call Loewe’s support line and organise a technician to come out and do it.

As part of my revamp of the house (and in particular the home office) I’m looking around at LCD monitors. They’ll be good for saving space on the new desks, making the computers less obtrusive.

LCDs used to be incredibly expensive. The reviews on sites like Dan’s Data show that just a couple of years ago, you could pay well over A$1000 for a 17 inch LCD. Thankfully they’ve fallen below the $400 mark now, which seems much more reasonable. They’ve also got much faster, with 4 or 8ms response times being very common. This is the good thing about being several steps behind the early adopters.

I could go more expensive for bigger, but I’ve been living with 15 and 17 inch CRTs so long that I don’t see the need to go bigger, since that would make the computers more obtrusive, I’ll gain in viewable area anyway, and I’d prefer two monitors an identical size to avoid the kids squabbling over who gets to use which.

Asking around, it would seem two good brands to look at are Samsung and BenQ, in part for their value for money, but also things like clearly defined dead pixel policies.

Samsung’s policy: any dead pixels in the first 7 days, they’ll swap for a new monitor at place of purchase. After that, any dead pixels in the 8cm x 8cm square in the middle warrants replacement, or 3 or more dead elsewhere. (The policies are different for bigger screens).

BenQ’s policy: any dead pixels in the first 7 days warrants replacement. Beyond that, anything in the middle 9th of the screen, and more than 2 bright dots and 3 dark dots elsewhere will trigger replacement.

Digital input, which neither of my computers are currently equipped for, appears to cost about $20 extra. Might as well get it for future use.

And of course there’s the vital question: silver, or black? (Not as obvious as for something like TV gear, where as far as I’m concerned, it’s black all the way.)

Next pay day, it’ll be time to go shopping.

Buying a monitor? Make sure it has HDCP, the up-and-coming digital content protection standard that will be built into Windows Vista and other future playing devices and systems. People with monitors that don’t have HDCP (and that’s almost everyone) will find their display deliberately fuzzy or even blacked out completely. Pah, bastards.

Will Apple and Linux follow suit in supporting this standard? Will monitor manufacturers start actually telling people about this, rather than actively selling them new kit that has built-in obsolesence? Will somebody hack the Vista Media Player to ignore the protection flags?