Need suggestions for a decent telescope to veiw mars

[Joe Lalumia]

and ME! Ha!

"Let's travel back in time, to the thrilling days of yesteryear and visit THE Lone Ranger!" ! on black and white TV.

[Astro-Baby]

Ahhhh the good old days. When the telly took half an hour to warm up and looked like a cabinet and was made from wood. Wonderful stuff really.

[jenniferchristine]

It was the almost round screen that got me - and the fact you could see the lines from across the room.

[Astro-Baby]

Actually it had its upside. Last night I set a program to record on my super high tech hard drive recorder (that can record up to three programs simultaneously while playing back a fourth program and has all kinds of techno wonders). Tonite I get home from work and turn the machine on and find - oh-oh - no program.

It turns out the TV station did a digital upgrade to their digital transmitter (the program was digital in HD) and as a result their upgrade to the transmission system has meant the hard drive recorder needs reboot to synchronise it again and a return to factory presets. Theres a bug apparentley when a station carries out upgrades which can affect some digital devices that may be using the signal. Oh GREAT. I dont ever remember the digital TV lobby bringing that one up when they talked about the joy and wonder of digital though me with my IT background always saw it was going to be like having Microsoft run your household appliances - oh dear - all your food defrosted in the freezer - never mind - just upgrade with Microsoft fridge/freezer version 3 and all will be well - course you'll need to reporgram EVERY device in the house and the new freezer software will only be compatible with certain types of cold foods bearing the 'aompatible with Microsoft' logo grrrrrrrrrr.

So two hours later the recorder is booted, reset and then all the channel data reloaded, all the original record timings re-input and all the channels relabelled - 2 hours of my time shot out.

Now you have to admit old style TV on a UHF channel in 425 line black and white EVER required you to rebuild the set to get to see a program did it ? What a load of crock most os this supposedly 'time saving' technology is.

[jenniferchristine]

That's amazing, the same thing happened to me last week.
Though it only took a few minutes to reboot it - but putting back the progs was a nuisance.
We only have 26 free channels here so it may be the reason it only took a few minutes to reboot.
My TV is pretty good, it retuned itself without me touching it - LG!

[Tesselator]

Got me too -
I was wondering why it would be too late....

Me too, only I still don't know why. I was further lame enough to go look at a simulator even: Solar System Simulator

PS: I haven't watched TV since Laurence Welk went re-run. It was all downhill from there.

And'a one'a and'a two'a...

[deaman49]

Ya gotta laugh! Things happen. Sure did get a heck of a discussion going. Everyone had fun.
Clear Skies!
Lee