My HD DirecTV TiVo has not made a daily call in 940 days. We’re counting down the next 60 days until it reaches 1000. Will it roll over to 1000 or is there some sort of Y2K programming bug that makes it blow up?
Two years ago I tried to make a daily call but it could never connect. I’m not sure it has ever connected to the TiVo Service. Of course that hasn’t stopped DirecTV from charging me a DVR service fee every month. You’d think after paying about $700 for the box they’d include service. Since it is a DirecTV TiVo it gets programming information from the Satellite, so I’ve never been without show information. However when this latest television season started all my season passes showed “no upcoming episodes” and it was weeks before we figured out that we were missing the new shows. This was when we coined the term “TeVil” which is what we call it when your TiVo screws you by not recording something or by cutting off the final critical moment of a show.
This is by far the slowest TiVo I’ve ever had. When the system is cold it takes about a full minute to pull up the main menu. I suspect that the sluggishness could be from all the messages. Each day it stores a new message telling me that it didn’t connect. Every 4 months or so I’ll delete a bunch of them, but it’s a very time consuming task and there are probably hundreds of messages in there now.
I’ll post update photos every few weeks as we count down the next 60 days. It should be about as interesting as waiting to see if Archer Quinn ever makes a perpetual motion machine.
My wife is gone all week and when she’s out of town I quickly turn into an sad echo of me in my bachelor days, staying up super late every night and eating like crap. Well, that’s also probably a valid description of what I’m like when she is home. But there’s a difference in scale. For example, last night I found myself laying in bed watching TV until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, drinking tea and devouring a bag of veggie chips coating each one with spay-on easy cheese.
What made last night relevant to this post is that I wasn’t really watching TV on TV, I was watching hulu.com. Now, it’s important to point out that I have very strong feelings about the separation of the computer screen and the home video screen. I DO NOT believe that the two should intertwine. Here’s why: First off, my home video setup is a projection system with a 13-foot screen while my computer screen is a 17″ mac book. Second, and actually more important, is that I want TV/Movie viewing to be a relaxing “experience” and therefore it should take place on my cozy couch. I also want it to be focused and typically don’t allow discourage laptop use during TV time. (The exception being my wife’s couch computer which I’ll cover a different day) ANYWAYS – Watching TV on a computer screen typically ruins my viewing experience either by forcing me into a different room (the one that I WORK in) and/or by forcing me into an uncomfortable position. Last night I basically just wanted to vegg out (with veggie chips!) and watch TV. But my TiVo is a little TiVoid of good shows right now, so I decided to give in and give hulu a try.
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