Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

surching4me


My life's not ALL about technology!

Filed under: Television

Think "Good Morning Vietnam"

via youtube.com

Boy this brings back some serious memories. You see after a 3 year stint in Marine Corps Artillery as a Field Wireman, I lateral moved into the role of Marine Corps Combat Correspondent, only on the Broadcast side. That allowed me to be assigned to a small Marine Corps Air Base in western Japan called Iwakuni, as part of the zany Far East Network Radio/Television team. In short, we had a blast. This was one of my many assignments running the afternoon drive-time radio show called the Afterburner. The morning show was the "Sack-Attack." Because that is how we rolled. Lots of video production was performed and fun was had. *sigh* memories... More can be viewed on my YouTube Channel if you are interested: http://bit.ly/bJXkXm

Dear DVR; I love you, but I hate you!

DVR.jpgOne of the greatest home appliances in this day and age is that of the Digital Video Recorder or DVR. What began with a very primitive TiVO that simply recorded one show on one channel, has evolved into a mulitple-tuner device that allows you to literally deal with three different television programs at the same time. Great technology, but one that has introduced a certain level of complexity to a nice evening at home that can sometimes be a bit stressful.

Every company remotely connected to television or television services has a device that records programming. I happen to use the Verizon FiOS service and couldn't settle for just the straight forward DVR. No, being a tech-head I had to have the most complex device they had to offer, the two tuner, HD, multi-room DVR jammy.

I had never really given the complexity much thought, that is until recently as I discovered several programs that I find entertaining and want to record. What started out as a way for me to record programs to watch later has evolved into one that has allowed me to enjoy the pleasure of watching one program while another that I wanted to watch at the same time records.

As if that wasn't enough, now I am at the level where I have two programs recording and am watching one that I have on stand-by on the DVR... WOW 3 programs going at the same time! But damnit! That still isn't good enough, why can't I just get one more tuner into this thing so I can keep browsing channels?!?!

I am really scared as to what the next step will be from here. As it is, I am becoming stressed with that little percentage number that shows up on the list of programs on the DVR showing me how much space I have left. It seems that I am the only one who fully understand the series modification settings to protect shows or bump older ones when space gets too low on the disk.

Lets not even get into the whole decision of whether to record a series' "First Runs & Repeats" or "First Run" only settings..... I feel as if there is more programming behind one of these DVRs than there was in the whole Apollo Program which took us to the moon! I have become obsessed with keeping it as close to 0% as I possibly can. So much so, that I have now become the DVR Capacity Manager for our house.

I am constantly on others case regarding the status of their viewing and whether or not I can delete their programs to make space for more recordings.

Me: "Did you finish Gray's Anatomy?," Mrs: "No," Me: "Do you know when you are going to get around to it? We're at 60% and we have a few shows in the lineup." Mrs: "I don't know, but don't let it disappear like that other show!" Me: "Fine, I'll set it to protect it."

Then I commence to staying up late to work my way through 5 episodes of the Daily Show to make space! It is getting insane, but I can't stop! OH NO!!! I just remembered, today is Thursday! TONS of recordings tonight! Have to make sure I have enough space or something is going to be sacrificed! Gotta run!

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