Home Theater, Part 5

Originally wrote this about three weeks ago thinking I was going to add some more to the story, but that hasn't happened. Lot's more to the story, but I got distracted, so you aren't going to hear about it, at least for a while.

I finally got fed up with Media Center DVR / STB combo (Digital Video Recorder / Set Top Box), called Verizon and ordered two regular DVR's. Not sure why I didn't do this in the first place. It will cost a couple bucks more month (like $34 instead of $30), but the aggravation it will save will be priceless. The idea was that you could have one DVR recording shows and you could play the recorded shows either there or from any other TV with an STB. Seems to me it was also cheaper.

The theory is nice, but in practice there were two many glitches. You could not set up recordings from the STB. You could not delete recordings. All recording management had to be done with the DVR. Fast forward and rewind had poor response times. The jump ahead and jump back buttons did not work and could not be changed. But mostly the STB box was flakey. It would lock up, lose it's place, just generally behave badly. Not often, but once is too much.

Another aspect is that you cannot play HD (High Definition) recordings on a regular TV. With so many channels available in HD now, sharing a DVR between an HD TV and a standard one didn't really make much sense.

The new DVR's seem to be a little more with it. I just programmed one to record a series and it had a bunch of episodes listed (all of them? I don't know, I didn't scroll through the whole list. It was long.)

I did run into one glitch. Hooked it up and waited. I read somewhere in the instructions that you have to wait a while for it to sort itself out the first time you turn it on. Come back later, think it should be ready to go, and ... nothing. Is this thing DOA (Dead On Arrival) ? It wouldn't be the first time I've had problems like this.

Fortunately I have another one I can try. I start unpacking it, and I think maybe I ought to look at the instructions once more. Oh! What's this? You have to CALL VERIZON to activate the box. What a friggin' pain. I hate this stuff. I can see it now: make the call, listen to some stupid recording, push a bunch of buttons, listen to a bunch more stupid recordings, end up on the wrong menu, get disconnected, put on hold, connected to the department of terminal stupidity. This puts in me such a funk that I abandon the task, go get a cup of tea and read for a while.

Fortified with tea, I go back to the instructions, resolved to make the stupid phone call and I see that there is a web address. I draft my son who is in between attacks on the enemy base to pull up the web site and enter the requisite numbers. OK, all done, now all we have to do it wait, again. 5 to 40 minutes. Mom's home, go eat dinner and we shall see.

All's well on DVR#1, now for DVR#2.