Tag: Comcast

Hurricane Live Shots – Enough Already

I spent a lazy day around the house this afternoon. For much of the day, Comcast decided I didn’t need cable access – thanks.

For part of the afternoon I buzzed around the cable news channels and TWC. I saw a variety of “harm’s way” live shots and I’ve had it. Enough already.

Whatever it is that defines the words ‘public service,’ this is the opposite.

Part of what broadcasters do (maybe we did more back when we pledged to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity) is inform viewers. In the case of an approaching major hurricane, we should be informing them about the coming storm and proper safety procedures.

Having these cowboys (and cowgirls) on from the scene sends exactly the opposite message.

As was shown with the Columbia shuttle disaster (and I suppose Einstein talked about this a little too), even an object with low mass can be trouble if moving at a sufficiently high rate of speed. What won’t hurt you if hurtling at 120+ mph?

Can rocks and pebbles fell you? Sure. Will a tree branch or aluminum sign sever a limb? Possibly. Can you get killed in a dozen ways or more? Absolutely.

Reporters stand outside, between buildings, claiming they’re in a protected area? Doesn’t anyone remember the Richelieu Apartments in Pass Christian, MS? Sturdy, concrete construction – leveled.

Actually, the reporters have the advantage. They’re using both eyes. The photographer is myopically staring through the camera lens… robbed of peripheral vision and depth perception.

This is very different than tornado chasing, where the periphery of the storm is much more well defined. In tornadoes, no one tries to get inside the funnel.

More than anything, this just sends the wrong message to the general public. And, of course, it emboldens news directors and assignment desks to send more people and equipment into the storm. Competition is, after all, competition. Who wants to be beaten on a story like this?

I don’t want Jim Cantore, Anderson Cooper, John Zarella, Rick Sanchez or their unseen cameramen and producers, to die. But someone is going to die – and for what?

That’s what’s going to put a stop to this. Someone will die or be terribly injured. I will take no solace knowing I told you so.

Bogger’s note: I write something similar to this every year. You can see it’s had no effect at all

No Cable Modem

I think this is being sent to you via my next door neighbor’s high speed Internet connection. I’m not 100% sure. I’ve scrambled around, looking for a signal and found one… if I sit in the corner of the bed with the edge of the laptop facing Dubuque. It won’t work any other way.

Next door, in my office, the cable light on the cable modem is off. Bad sign.

I called Comcast and spoke to a Canadian woman (based on her accent). Dealing with the first level of tech support is the part that makes me want to pull out my hair.

Before I call I unplug, replug, reset, double check – you get the idea. I am not without some knowledge in this arcane subject. Yet the first thing she had me do was unplug the modem (again) and the router.

The router is behind the cable modem. Only through a thorough repealing of the laws of physics could it be causing my trouble. It would be as if my pipes didn’t work, so the plumber checked the glass I was thinking of drinking from.

Helaine points out this has happened more frequently lately. She’s right. And, the fact that this technology, though getting more mature, is failing more is a very bad sign. It’s also not good that my neighbor’s connection (also via Comcast) is fine.

A problem limited to an individual account is going to be harder to fix and slower to fix than a widespread outage.

Meanwhile, back on the phone, she couldn’t find my account, couldn’t find a way to schedule my appointment, and often seemed to be talking to herself! None of this is reassuring.

I continue to fear the cable connection will fail right when I’m taking some pivotal timed online test for school. Until then, I’ll be popping back into my office every few minutes looking for a lit cable modem light.

School Day Blues

I was up until a little after 5:00 AM taking my two quizzes and two tests at Mississippi State.

I am still finding the thermodynamics course tough. I got an 88% last night, but should have done better. Eight of the points I lost, I lost stupidly on questions I probably knew. My fault.

For both of my two course, this last week is critically important. The quizzes I took are worth less than a point on my final grade, but the tests are 7.5% and next week’s final is 30% of my final grade. So, nearly 40% of my final grade will be decided over a very short period of time.

Why am I anguishing over these grades? No one will ever see them. Yet I do anguish.

The tests are timed, the quizzes are not, which last night almost led to a sticky situation. As I was finishing a quiz, getting set to move to a test, I pressed the button to register my answer and… nothing. I tried again with the same result.

I went upstairs to see the ‘cable’ light on my cable modem off. Comcast was doing something (probably maintenance of some sort. It was 3:45 AM) affecting my service.

If this had happened five minutes later, I would have been in the timed test – and screwed. There are lots of ‘no exceptions’ admonitions on the course websites.

I waited a half hour or so, writing a note asking Helaine to make sure I was up this morning early enough to finish my work before the noon deadline. Just before I went back to bed, I looked and the light was back on.

Sometime before Wednesday I’ll take my two finals and be done with it… only to start up again May 16th. This summer semester, a shortened period with the same number of classes, quizzes and tests, is the end of the line for me.

I’ve found lots of the work interesting, though some of what I’ve done was trivial or needless. There is much too much emphasis on severe weather (thunderstorms and tornadoes) and not enough on the challenges a forecaster faces on a daily basis.

What Hath Comcast Wrought?

As of last night my Internet connection had slowed to a crawl. Nothing has changed.

Comcast has a DNS problem. That’s their computer which gives my computer directions on where to go when I type in www.geofffox.com or any other website.

There is a fix and I know it, but my particular router doesn’t support it! It must be the only one. So, I sit and wait.

Some websites, like the one I use at Mississippi State, have many separate files for each webpage. Trying to get through to them is worse than brutal.

We have quickly grown dependent on speedy web connections. It’s an inconvenience now. We will only grown more dependent with time.

Comcast High Speed Internet Hosed

Steffie called earlier this evening to tell me the “Internet was down.”

There are many possible failure points before leaving our house, but a quick check of some user forums shows the problem was Comcast’s and not limited to Connecticut. There are some angry subscribers out there tonight.

National

General Outage – Resolved at 4/7/2005 6:40:38 PM EDT

(Connection to the Internet is currently unavailable. Our technicians are aware of the situation and are working to resolve the issue. This outage was logged at : 4/1/2005 6:14:00 PM EDT.)

General Outage

(Connection to the Internet is currently unavailable. Our technicians are aware of the situation and are working to resolve the issue. This outage was logged at : 4/7/2005 5:32:00 PM EDT.)

Could that have been written to be any more confusing? I think it means it’s out… it’s still out.

This is related to their DNS servers, the Comcast computers that tell your computers where to find other computers, were down or slowed or otherwise impaired. So, when you type www.geofffox.com, your computer is never told that corresponds to 66.225.220.189. There are rumors, which I can’t confirm, that this is some sort of organized attack on the Comcast DNS to route users to infected websites.

There are some simple fixes for users. I talked the husband of a co-worker through the procedure in about 90 seconds. Hopefully that won’t be necessary too much longer.

Now that Internet access is being used for everything, including phone service, it’s time it became as dependable as a public utility.

The Best Movie Ever Made

Having the DVR does open up some possibilities. Every once in a while I just scour the listings, looking for something to record. The software on my Comcast issued Scientific Atlanta box makes this a little more difficult than it should (reverting to your current time and channel each time you set a recording). It’s still worth doing.

Often, I record something and never watch it. Hey, that’s life.

Last night, after watching The Daily Show, I looked through the list to see what else had been saved for me. Near the top of the list I saw, “Under Siege.”

“Under Siege” is a classic ‘guy’ movie, starring Steven Segal, supported by Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey and the always inflated Erika Eleniak&#185.

The concept is (this will be the first time ever this is refered to as a concept picture) a disgruntled Gary Busey, the executive officer on board the soon-to-be-decomissioned USS Missouri, conspires with Tommy Lee Jones and his gang of evil doers to steal the Missouri’s contingent of nuclear weapons. First they have to neutralize the crew – often in the most violent of ways.

Of course there is one small thing they never planned for, Casey Ryback. Ryback was a Navy Seal and all around deep sea Rambo until he got busted for striking a superior officer. There’s not much detail, but the brief description given makes it seem like a patriotic, yet emotional outburst from a ‘real man.’ Now he’s a cook, finishing his 20 years in the Navy.

Is there any need to go into the details? There are a hundred other movies that are virtually the same. In fact, there’s another Segal movie, starring Eric Bogosian as the whacko evil doer, which would seem like plagarism if it weren’t from the same group.

There is something eerily attractive about this movie.

Busey and Tommy Lee Jones make great villains. This is espeically true of Jones who plays a psychotic who is genuinely off center in every way.

If I’ve seen this movie once, I’ve seen it a dozen times. And, if given the opportunity, I’d see it again tomorrow. It is a guilty pleasure, to be sure.

What is it that makes action movies like ‘Under Siege’ or nearly any submarine movie so appealing – especially to me a totally non-violent man? Is it somehow wired into my genes? I don’t know and I won’t attempt to fight it.

&#185 – It should be noted that though Erika Eleniak appears topless for a few brief seconds near the beginning of the movie, mostly she is dressed and shot in such a way that her physique is a non-factor… as difficult as that is to believe.

My DVR – It’s Not TiVo

I read an article about DVRs, Digital Video Recorders, in the New York Times this weekend. Like most of the New York radio and television stations and the major news networks, I get many of my best ideas from the Times. Unlike them, I admit it.

The article, like so many on this subject, talked about how DVRs are. I have one and I do enjoy it. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near the TV nirvana experienced by the writers I’ve read.

The concept behind TiVo, Replay TV and the others is pretty simple. Record everything on a hard drive instead of tape, and use computer technology to make it easier, yet more powerful than an old school VCR.

The problem is, all DVRs are not created equal. I think mine, A Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 that I rent from Comcast&#185, is somewhere near the bottom. This is not the device people are clamoring for, though it is marketed in the same way.

I often hear about how TiVo will ‘learn’ about what you watch and then record programs based on your likes. This SA box doesn’t do that. It is the featured I would most like to see.

The menu system within this DVR is disjointed, non-intuitive and difficult to learn. I have programmed recordings based on time, but I couldn’t tell you how… and would have to hit a bunch of dead ends before I did it again.

Recording scheduled programs is easier, but still not simple. The program guide is two clicks of two separate buttons away. Why? Isn’t this the most used feature? It should be directly accessible.

Working back ward through the guide is nearly impossible. Going backward in time through midnight just doesn’t work.

The guide itself is sorely lacking. Movies and programs on some channels don’t show. Channels that I don’t subscribe to do show, adding an extra layer I have to move through before setting the recorder. The text information describing the programs is sparse.

In using the video-on-demand features, the same function on different menus uses a different keystroke! That violates one of the most basic rules of user interface design.

Possibly the most frustrating problem is the propensity of the 8000 to accept a key press from the remote control, but do nothing for a few seconds. Most likely during that time you have decided the machine didn’t get the first press and have pressed again. Now you have screwed up whatever you were attempting.

If Comcast or Scientific Atlanta asked, I’d tell them. I did once send a note to SA, using a form on their website. I never received a reply.

&#185 – As part of my retirement account I have Comcast stock. So, I am not a disinterested party here. However, since I’m talking down their product, you can see that hasn’t affected me.

Comcast Returns

When I came home from work cable modem service was back to normal. Phew.

Comcast – No Improvement

I am at work but just spoke to Helaine. She says the cable modem is now totally unusable. I ran a test on dslreports.com which visually confirms what she’s seeing.

She asked that I call Comcast. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes (tonight they do have an announcement every few seconds telling me my call is important… though not important enough to staff the place with enough operators) I got a customer service rep.

Yes, they know they have a problem. Yes, it’s a Cisco router – somewhere local in Connecticut. They’re expecting it… no it’s there. They’re installing it and it should be back to normal late tonight or early tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

My Internet Connection S-L-O-W-S to a Crawl

Sunday evening, playing poker on the laptop, I first noticed the problem. My Internet connection would stop for a few seconds – sometimes 10s of seconds – before resuming. The poker site I play at allows you to check the connection of the others at your table. They were fine, I was not.

Comcast has been very dependable. So, I did nothing, figuring all would be well on Monday morning. Guess again.

Helaine asked me what was going on. Her connection was slow. Steffie later chimed in with the same complaint. “The Internet is sketchy,” she said.

Between the three of us we spend an awful lot of time online and we’re spoiled with reasonably fast connections. This was totally unacceptable.

I decided to call Comcast when I came home from dinner. I worked my way through the phone tree (press 1, press 2, press 1 again). My hold time was somewhere around 10 wasted minutes.

On hold systems have two options:

1) Incessant announcements (which drive you nuts when you start hearing them the fifth, sixth, twentieth time).

2) No announcements, just a little light elevator music. That was Comcast’s choice and it’s really not much better.

While on hold I wondered if I was really in the queue? Maybe I’d be listening to these European studio musicians for the rest of my natural life!

A pleasant sounding woman, from Central Ontario it turned out, answered the call. She made me jump all the usual hoops – reboot, unplug, replug, etc. She could see there was a problem with packet loss and offered to send a service tech, but the system wouldn’t let her schedule one. Could I call back later?

After work, and on whisper mode with Helaine asleep in the next room, I dialed Comcast again. As I was waiting for a live person, I scooted over to DSLreports.com to see if anyone else had reported this trouble. The Comcast Connecticut thread was four pages long! I had plenty of company.

This time a Canadian guy (I didn’t ask if he was Canadian – but I worked in Buffalo, just across the Niagara River from Canada and know their regionalisms, eh) picked up. He started to do his dance and talk about sending a technician to the house, but I stopped him.

The problem isn’t here, in my house. It’s far away at some router. I even know the router’s address: 12.125.51.34. It’s owned by AT&T and probably serves as Comcast’s connection from Connecticut to the Internet in general.

If I know this, why doesn’t Comcast’s tech support guy? Why spend money and send technicians when there’s no problem they’ll fix? Why not tell me loads of others have reported problems, we’re working on it?

If I asked someone high up at Comcast whether they wanted this fixed right away and wanted their customers informed, I’m sure the answer would be yes. They want the best possible result spending the least amount of money. Yet their actions show there’s a disconnect between what would benefit them and their customers and what they’re delivering. And, they might not know this customer service problem even exists.

There is no one served by what went on tonight. Not me. Not Comcast. Their phone people were polite and pleasant but never even brought me one step closer to satisfaction.

I really don’t want to have to call back on this tomorrow.

Without The Web

I came home from work last night, turned on the computer, got my mail then went to change. By the time I returned to the PC, the Internet had disappeared. On the cable modem, bot the PC and power lights were on – the cable light was not.

It was nearly 1:00 AM, so I decided not to call Comcast. Who would have been around at that time to fix it? Surely it would be working by morning.

When Helaine got up, no Internet!

As it turns out, sometime around 10:00 AM service returned. But that’s not the point. Without the Internet, I was lost.

I wanted to blog. There was a weather display program I had discovered that I wanted to test on my Linux machine. I wanted to trade emails and read about the World Series of Poker on Usenet. I wanted to play poker.

There is a backup. I’m not even sure if it’s currently connected, but my router has the facility to connect to an external modem I have and (shudder) dial-in for my connection. I have become so spoiled that I put that option off.

I went downstairs and watched two episode of “The Screen Savers” I had recorded from G4TechTV. It’s only during the past week that TechTV shows have been available on my cable system. The shows were enjoyable, though a bit under produced and choppy. Some of the anchors were less than comfortable on-the-air.

Most of all, I missed Leo Laporte. When I had last seen this program, he had been hosting. He is, by far, the best tech host on television – a total natural.

It’s funny how much my late night enjoyment depends on having the Internet. It is a weakness. It is not necessarily wrong.

More And More Linux Frustration

This is a rant born of frustration. I guess I’m looking for some sort of community consensus – not how I should solve my problem, but how the Open Source community should attack a real problem of usability.

In my heart of hearts, I so want to love Linux. But now, after months of trying, I’m wondering if I’m not ready for Linux, and more importantly, if Linux isn’t ready for me.

Some quick background. I took my last computer course in 1968 (that’s no typo). To my friends, I am tech support. My wife has watched me guide others through menu after menu, all while in bed, with my eyes closed. The computer I’m typing on was assembled by me from parts I specified. The one next to it has just received a motherboard/cpu transplant on my kitchen table.

I am not a technophobe. Still, Linux frustrates me in nearly every possible way.

Over the last week, since rebuilding my auxiliary computer, I have loaded and reloaded and reloaded again. My estimate is a dozen loads of 5 or 6 different flavors of Linux. Each of them similar. Each of them different.

I’m starting to get worried Comcast will flag me for overly taxing their system with all the iso’s I’ve scarfed up.

On some distributions my audio card is recognized. On others it’s not, or is only after some minor tweaking. On one (and I wish I could remember which one) my TV card plays. On others, it’s cryptic error messages – messages which make Microsoft’s error messages seem kind and gentle. On one distribution, the box for the TV is blank, but the rest of the screen is full of noise, which seems to be the disjointed TV video.

The only way to get the printer to work (it’s attached to an onboard print server on my router) is by first making believe it’s attached directly to this computer and then editing the file. Clever.

None of the Linux variants I’ve used knew what to do with the video system on my motherboard – though it’s far from esoteric. I am stuck with a generic VESA driver, which means my system is running slower than it should.

I have tried to fix all of these problems, but let me use the video problem as my example. Doing a Google search for the video chip (KM400 from Via) and Linux leads to some interesting suggestions. There are some that seem to be translated to English from Chinese, but not well enough that anyone speaking English could follow. Others originate in German, then English, and again something is lost in translation. Steps are missing or just hinted at. No two suggested remedies are exactly the same.

As I look through the Usenet responses, it’s tough not to pick up smart ass disdain from many of the cognoscenti! And, I expect to get some of that here.

One of the things that’s touted as a strength of Linux, and weakness of Windows, seems to be the opposite. Windows lives in a standard world. My Linux box does not. Will the Debian driver work in my Mandrake distribtution? Maybe, though probably not.

Does my 2.6 Kernel need different care and feeding than a 2.4? Seems like it. But, I don’t really know what a kernel is, much less why 2.4 and 2.6 eat different food.

My motherboard came with all the Windows drivers I’d need – none for Linux.

Will I have to compile a package? Can I? How do I do it?

I want this to work, yet I feel Linux is fighting me. The Linux community seems anxious for this to work… and at the same time it’s scared that their baby will go mainstream… afraid that someone will do to Linux what they perceive AOL did to the Internet!

I’m not going to give up. But, I am getting very frustrated – very. I can’t believe I am alone.

More Linux Indecision

My Linux computer is a non-critical device. There’s nothing on it I really need. Maybe some day, but not now.

That has given me the luxury to change distributions (the individual flavors of Linux) in much the same way Cher changes costumes during a performance. I would guess, by now, I’ve loaded and reloaded a dozen Linux configurations.

Mostly, I’ve moved back and forth between different versions of Mandrake and Red Hat. Last night I tried “Whiteboxlinux,” which is really Red Hat’s latest Enterprise edition, liberated from any of Red Hat’s licensing. In the world of open source, this is fine and legal.

I am starting to develop an affinity for Mandrake. Their methods of configuration are much more thorough and easily used than anyone else’s I’ve tried. That’s a big deal.

Do I know who I will stick with? No. Do I worry I’ve downloaded so much data that Comcast will come to me and ask me to cool it? Yes.

The one insurmountable problem I still face is getting Linux to load a drive for my particular video configuration. My motherboard has an integrated Via Unichrome KM-400 setup, which is esoteric enough that ‘generic’ drivers go in. The correct drivers would speed my system greatly. If I only knew how?

The chip maker, Via, has a site with instructions. Following those took me perilously close to crashing the whole thing.

Liking My 8000 Explorer… Sort Of

It is nice to have the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) from Comcast. For the last week I’ve been playing with my Scientific Atlanta 8000 Explorer.

I have been recording like a drunken sailor. Last night I watched Hannah and Her Sisters (which had run at some inconvenient time). I’ve taken to seeing Letterman when I get home from work… even though the show is already in progress. Right now, I’m watching a documentary on water (please, I know how exciting that makes me sound)&#185.

I will have to learn that I’m under no obligation to watch what I record.

The user interface on the DVR to be kludgey at best. There are too many menus which are unreachable directly and must be reached by navigating through other, more general, menus. The listings of recorded or to be recorded show don’t show enough entries at once. As far as I can tell, there is no direct access to see the beginning of a show which is being recorded (In other words, if I walk in at midnight and want to watch Letterman from the beginning, though the recording continues in the background)

Digital TV is always slower in tuning than analog. So the click, click, click of a remote control doesn’t quite have the same speed or satisfaction. I have found this unit even slower than my non-DVR digital tuner. This might be because everything is actually being viewed after having been recorded – even live TV.

Some of the problems have been significant enough to force me to write Scientific Atlanta, who built the box.

Form Confirmation

Thank you for submitting the following information:

name: Geoff Fox

email: me@geofffox.com

submit: Submit

question

My 8000 has shown some strange behavior. Last night, during the playback of a movie (with no other recordings in progress) the playback stopped on three separate occasions. The video just froze – and then returned a few seconds later.

Also, this morning the unit is very slow to respond to channel changes. If, for instance, I enter a “1” on the keypad, it can be nearly 5 seconds before that shows on the LED readout. So, I have no idea whether the signal was even received by the unit.

Thank you, Geoff Fox

I’ll report back on their response… if any.

&#185 – A few seconds after I type that, I had had enough. It’s off and erased.

More High Tech Comes Home

I am a sucker for high tech. The common term is early adopter. I had a PC in 1978 and was on the Internet in the late 80s (though it wasn’t the graphical World Wide Web we know today). Now, I have a DVR.

DVR stands for Digital Video Recorder. A TIVO is a DVR. They’ve been around for a few years but, as far as I can see, they are poorly understood by most people.

Instead of recording video onto tape, DVR’s record video on a hard drive. The disadvantage is the lack of portability – being able to take a tape from your machine to someone else’s, since there’s no tape to take. The advantage is, since this is more a computer than mechanical device, you can integrate database manipulation into the package. That means a DVR can read a program schedule, allowing you to program thing in an easier fashion.

TIVO takes it one step further. If you show an interest in watching people play poker, for instance, TIVO will start recording poker shows – even without you asking!

Now that I think about it, there’s another disadvantage to DVD – the cost. For TIVO, you pay to buy the box and then pay again with a monthly subscription (or a lifetime fee paid when you buy the TIVO).

That’s what kept me away from a DVR, even though I’ve never heard anything but positive reviews. In fact, last week I spoke to a friend who said TIVO was the best purchase he had ever made. That’s quite an endorsement.

People in my business are petrified by the prospect of DVRs. It will make our programming schedules meaningless. More importantly, skipping commercials is simple, and commercials pay my salary and pay for all the programming on over-the-air TV and much of cable.

Recently, my cable company Comcast, started offering their own DVR for $9.95 a month additional. As it is, we’re already paying about as much a month for cable service as I paid rent for my first apartment! I decided to give it a try.

Comcast has an office near where I work, so I stopped by Thursday afternoon to pick one up. There were two customer service reps and eight subscribers waiting in line. No way I’d have that much time. I left.

Thursday evening, after the early news, I headed back to Comcast. The line was shorter. Before long I was leaving with a Scientific Atlanta 8000 Explorer… but not before someone in line recognized me and asked if I was there to pay because my cable service had been cut off. It’s a thrill a minute.

The DVR replaces my digital able box and it was pretty simple. I swapped the power cord, antenna cable, and the three wires that bring the audio (2 channels) and video to the TV set. Inside the box a disk drive began to spin. My DVD was booting up like the computer it is.

Within two or three minutes it was finished. On my TV screen the Scientific Atlanta logo was replaced by some ratty type inside a box telling me my unit hadn’t been authorized, I couldn’t watch anything, and I should call the toll free Comcast number.

It was after midnight when I got the error screen and found out no one’s working at Comcast on the all night show. This is not to say I didn’t get passed around voice mail hell and actually did speak with a real person. What I found out after working my way through the menus was that he wasn’t in New Haven, and not being here there was nothing he could do.

The preceding paragraph would have been acceptable, except I did call back the next morning to fix the problem and did get it fixed… without human intervention! Why couldn’t that have been done the night before?

I don’t have too much experience yet, and I’m not totally won over, but it’s interesting. The Comcast DVR doesn’t have the intuitive ability to guess my viewing preferences like TIVO does. It is programmed by an online channel guide, which is very easy to operate.

Unlike VCRs, the DVR has multiple tuners and will record two shows and play back another, all at the same time. It gives any TV picture-in-picture capability. Since everything goes through the DVR, you’re always watching it and it’s always recording. That means you can pause live TV!

In order to control all of this, and the TV it’s connected to, the remote control has 53 buttons, including two that are multipurpose (channel and volume). It’s a handful, to say the least.

There are a few problems I’ve noticed so far. The channel guide for programming includes all sorts of channels I don’t get, making a long list even longer. I wanted to go through the list of current movies, but the addition of all these channels made it excruciating. On the other hand, at least five or six movie channels we do get weren’t on the list.

The clock on my unit is about 20 seconds slow. So, my recordings start 20 seconds late.

I haven’t notice it yet, but Helaine complained the tuner switched channels when a recording started. That’s fine for the machine, but Helaine didn’t want to watch the Simpsons.

Since the DVR replaces my old cable box I went to return it the next day. This time it was 10 in line for two reps. I’ll try again Monday.

Blogger’s note: As if it knew, as I was filing this entry, the DVR crashed. It was a quick blue screen full of text and then power off! A few seconds later I was able to revive it, though it took at least 30 seconds to start working.