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DocStrange
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29 Feb 2008, 2:39 pm

My mother called me up a few hours ago proclaiming that the computer (at her house, not mine) is messing up her television signal.
Both the computer and this TV are in the Kitchen of her hope and this TV has rabbit ears (e.g. an over-the-air antenna, she believes this new thing that will cease over-the-air transmission in 2009 is a ruse to make her buy a new TV) and she believes that the computer is messing this up. Now she's called our cable company, the company she purchased the computer from (Rent-A-Center, believe it or not), and me and she doesn't believe anyone. She basically unplugged the computer which all three of us told her explicitly not to do.

Now, my mother is the kind of woman who belives that Norton Antivirus is a virus because it says "virus" in the tile or believes that Google is sending our information to the president immediatly. So she's a technophobe.
How do I calm her down? She already chased away a guy from our Cable Company she called to put it back because she was frightened by his "technobabble" and thought he was a "hacker like on 60 Minutes".


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Stevopedia
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29 Feb 2008, 3:21 pm

Oh my, your mother's case is a complex one! 8O

Unfortunately for you both, I don't know of any cures or treatments for technophobia.

She may have a valid point, though: some electronics do produce RF interference, but I don't know that PCs do. I do know that CRTs and fluorescent lamps do, though (especially compact fluorescent bulbs; they have electronic ballasts that operate in the megahertz frequency range, and so could affect analog TV signals which lie in a similar frequency range.) I doubt that's her problem though.



DocStrange
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29 Feb 2008, 5:04 pm

Stevopedia wrote:
Oh my, your mother's case is a complex one! 8O

Unfortunately for you both, I don't know of any cures or treatments for technophobia.

She may have a valid point, though: some electronics do produce RF interference, but I don't know that PCs do. I do know that CRTs and fluorescent lamps do, though (especially compact fluorescent bulbs; they have electronic ballasts that operate in the megahertz frequency range, and so could affect analog TV signals which lie in a similar frequency range.) I doubt that's her problem though.


No, no, no
she thinks that someone's installed a program on the computer that's sole purpose is to muck up her tv. She's now proclaiming its the people who sold her computer or the cable company and they want her to get a new tv or a box for the big change coming up in '09 (when TV will no longer broadcast over-the-air but over digital instead). She believes it's a lie to get her to buy a new TV. Yes, she thinks that all those TV commercials, her freinds, family, the cable company, Rent-a-Center, its employees and the federal government are that committed to getting her to change over on the single TV she has an antenna on (so she can watch "Days of Our Lives" while doing dishes, you see).


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Pikachu
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01 Mar 2008, 3:06 pm

ok, there are no computer programs in existence (that I am aware) that could interfere with analogue TV reception

Indoor TV antennas aren't the best anyway, I have one, picks up all sorts of interference, so if anything the picture is likely to be messed up by interference from something else, probably unrelated to the computer

try to explain this to your mother somehow, not sure how you could do that though


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