Dare I tempt Comcast?
After following along with Eric's trials and tribulations with Comcast I shudder to add dealing with them to my list of things to do...but I must.
We have a two-TiVo household. The "big" TiVo lives upstairs with the "little", where we enjoyed its capability to record one station while watching another or to record two shows at the same time. Chris will often work on Green Ronin business on his laptop while the History Channel plays in the background. Meanwhile, the "little" TiVo (a hand-me-down from Tim ) lives downstairs with the big tv (also a hand-me-down from the Technologically Upwardly-Mobile Tim) so Kate can watch Naruto or NCIS instead of Dogfights of WWII if she so desires.
Somewhere in late June (shortly after the Sopranos series finale, thank the cable gods!) the upstairs TiVo stopped being able to record any shows above basic cable. Not TiVo's fault... any channels over 99 no longer come in upstairs (though service is fine downstairs). Instead we see a blue screen and the message "This channel with be available shortly" but it never is available. We were entering convention season by then so aside from one day of screwing around with the connections to be sure nothing was unplugged or anything obvious, we've been just dealing with it.
If either of us really wants to record a show (from BBC America or HBO) we can record it downstairs and transfer the recording upstairs and that's worked ok as a stopgap. We have to be fast, though, because we never know when Kate will have the "little" TiVo recording a two-day marathon of something wretched, like last weekend's non-stop assault of The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. The "big" TiVo is full of offerings from basic cable but there are only so many back-to-back episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report I can watch in a row before I need something else. The "big" TiVo continues to record shows that it predicts I will like but because it's pulling from a large number of channels we should have (and do pay for, and do get in the other room) there are a whole lot of blank recordings tempting me. Why yes, maybe I would like to watch V for Vendetta or Big Love... but no, they're just recordings of a blue screen.
I think it says something about the generally full and hectic pace of my life that I've only now, some four months later, had the time or energy to even consider addressing this cable issue. If we're lucky, it's something as simple as getting a new cable box. Wish me luck!
We have a two-TiVo household. The "big" TiVo lives upstairs with the "little", where we enjoyed its capability to record one station while watching another or to record two shows at the same time. Chris will often work on Green Ronin business on his laptop while the History Channel plays in the background. Meanwhile, the "little" TiVo (a hand-me-down from Tim ) lives downstairs with the big tv (also a hand-me-down from the Technologically Upwardly-Mobile Tim) so Kate can watch Naruto or NCIS instead of Dogfights of WWII if she so desires.
Somewhere in late June (shortly after the Sopranos series finale, thank the cable gods!) the upstairs TiVo stopped being able to record any shows above basic cable. Not TiVo's fault... any channels over 99 no longer come in upstairs (though service is fine downstairs). Instead we see a blue screen and the message "This channel with be available shortly" but it never is available. We were entering convention season by then so aside from one day of screwing around with the connections to be sure nothing was unplugged or anything obvious, we've been just dealing with it.
If either of us really wants to record a show (from BBC America or HBO) we can record it downstairs and transfer the recording upstairs and that's worked ok as a stopgap. We have to be fast, though, because we never know when Kate will have the "little" TiVo recording a two-day marathon of something wretched, like last weekend's non-stop assault of The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. The "big" TiVo is full of offerings from basic cable but there are only so many back-to-back episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report I can watch in a row before I need something else. The "big" TiVo continues to record shows that it predicts I will like but because it's pulling from a large number of channels we should have (and do pay for, and do get in the other room) there are a whole lot of blank recordings tempting me. Why yes, maybe I would like to watch V for Vendetta or Big Love... but no, they're just recordings of a blue screen.
I think it says something about the generally full and hectic pace of my life that I've only now, some four months later, had the time or energy to even consider addressing this cable issue. If we're lucky, it's something as simple as getting a new cable box. Wish me luck!
Labels: anti-technology
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