Dedication
For Larry McGee
This player is dedicated to my grandfather, Larry McGee.
When I was a kid we lived on a variety of remote farms in Colorado and Idaho. Civilization was always a three-hour drive away. Network TV signals were often only accessible on Sunday nights, when the PBS signal would get boosted because a state senator donated money from his farming proceeds so everyone could enjoy Masterpiece Theatre, All Creatures Great and Small, and Are You Being Served? Watching live TV was a rare treat. We filled the gaps with AM radio, so a kid from the early eighties grew up listening to radio serials from the thirties and forties, and then with VHS tapes sent to us by my uncle Rich (thanks, Rich).
A couple of times a year we would make the long drive back to Colorado Springs to visit my grandmother and her second husband, who we simply knew as Larry.
Larry was a teenage kid trapped in a man's body. That kid got trapped there in the jungles of Vietnam. He was a super-geek, like me, and he worked tirelessly at side jobs so he could tinker with the latest electronics and computers. Larry also loved wrestling. I have yet to meet a wrestling fan with his devotion.
It was the greatest thing I had ever seen. It still impresses me when I think about it today.
On one of our trips back to Colorado Springs, Larry revealed a massive satellite dish he had mounted on a cement pad in the backyard. He showed us how the motors would position it so you could watch television broadcasts from around the world. Larry installed that behemoth because he loved to watch TV from around the world — and to make sure he never missed a wrestling broadcast anywhere. Whenever we visited, we would spend countless hours skipping through broadcasts from around the world.
Larry would have loved this player, and so I dedicate it to him.
Thanks to the people who maintain the iptv-org repository, whose public directory makes this possible.