Tag Archives: TV

News

Another DVR Down

Well, we blew our second DVR drive last week. I think we’re getting pretty good at it. This one was the second of the two original DVRs we got when we started using them back in August of 2003. They gave us a new box and we were back up and running again the next day. Except without the 20 or so scheduled recordings we had set. Now we have to wait until the fall TV season gets rolling again to find our shows in the schedule and set new timers. But luckily we didn’t lose any critical saved shows on the hard drive.

And since we got the new box we’ve been enjoying the free “on-demand” channels we now get! I think this is something new (the free ones I mean) because I hadn’t heard of them before. Sandy likes The Food Network On Demand. She gets a list of saved shows and recipes and she just chooses one and there it is, whenever you want to watch it. It’s like having a hard drive already filled with a bunch of shows from each channel and you just choose what you want to watch whenever you want. Kevin likes the Cartoon Network On Demand and PBS Kids On Demand and I like TechTV On Demand, although I’m not sure how long this channel will last, seeing how everything is so up-in-the-air now regarding TechTV these days. Speaking of which, I can’t record The ScreenSavers properly yet since they moved it to the stupid G4TechTV channel. There’s no show schedule on my DVR for that channel! It just shows “No Data” across the entire day for that channel. That kinda takes the Tech out of TechTV, doesn’t it? I haven’t gotten around to trying to create a manual schedule for it yet, but that’s what I’ll have to do I guess. But I can see it already–as soon as I create a custom schedule that works they’ll cancel the show and fire the staff. It certainly wouldn’t be much of a surprise at this point.

Time Warner also gave us 3 free months of HBO On Demand and Cinemax On Demand with the new DVR too. So guess what I’ve been catching up on lately? Season 5 of the Sopranos! This is awesome. I can’t wait until they do this with EVERY major TV show! Just scroll through each episode and watch the shows you missed, or watch the entire season beginning to end!

News

Live commercial

I think I saw a commercial last night. No, not on TV, on Highway 50. As I was driving home from Union Grove on the highway I came up behind one of those Mitsubishi SUVs. It was black in color (just like in the commercial) and believe it or not the flip-down tv screen was down and they were actually watching SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!! So eerily like the commercial that it kinda freaked me out. I laughed most of the way home. If you’ve seen the commercial you know the one I’m talking about.

News

DVR Paradise

Our two new DVRs have done wonders for us so far. What they’re capable of is pretty neat, and so easy it’s scary. And with the fall television season starting this coming week, I’m afraid I might just overdose on television altogether!

We use the living room DVR to record Kevin’s favorite shows and a few of ours. He was pretty quick to learn the concept. Over the past couple weeks he’s seen a few shows he really likes and says “Daddy, can I get MORE ‘Courage The Cowardly Dog’ or ‘Dexter’s Laboratory?’ I say “Why sure, just a second…’ and with a few clicks of the remote I have a “series schedule” set to record every episode of the show he wants. I tell him I’ll have it for him by tomorrow. So now when he gets TV time he just says ‘Dad, I wanna watch some Spongebob,” and I go through the recorded shows list and put it on for him. How’s THAT for a spoiled kid!

All the options are there too–you can setup any series to ‘keep until manually deleted’ or allow the show to scroll off the list if the hard drive runs out of recording space. Or you can ‘keep the last __ episodes’ of any series, record any occurence of the series on ANY channel or just a specific channel, record all episodes or just ‘first runs’, etc. It sounds complicated, but that’s only when you dig deep down into it. On the surface it’s very simple to use.

It also makes life so much easier for new shows that people recommend to me– “Mahirose” recommended Nip/Tuck to me a few weeks ago, so I setup a series recording and now I’m hooked on it! It’s a great show on FX…

Anyway, as they say, with a DVR you can “Watch TV on YOUR terms, when YOU want to watch it.” You’re no longer bound the the wacky competing prime-time schedules of network television (it’ll even record two shows that are on at the same time!), or the poorly-timed shows that are on when you’re away or working. When YOU have time to watch television you can sit down and load up a show, fast-forward through all the commercials, and pause when you need to use the restroom!

Geez, I should sell these things…

News

Hi! (a posting from Jay)

Just figured I’d drop a line and say hi. Will’s getting big…up to 9 lbs now! He’s getting the “Trottier belly” goin on! (Just like his dad and the other Trottier males 😉  Our dog gets us better TV reception now! She has a cone on her head. Cassie finnaly got fixxed last Friday…shes doing good. Its funny, but I think she got more balloons and cards then I did when I had surgery….hmmmm. Michelle got her long hair chopped off  😦  I have to admit, I love it, it looks AWESOME! I picked up a new hobby, I got back into R/C Nitro racing. I bought a Traxxas T-Maxx   check it out…It’s my new found love (next to Michelle and the kids of course 😉

Well, I guess thats all the new updates for now. Until next time……………..Goodbye 🙂

-Jay