Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Betrayed by Technology

This week our DVR's hard drive died. Our satellite company is sending us a new DVR but until then, we will be enduring some particular hardships.

When I want to watch TV, I will be forced to watch it live, as it's happening. I can't pause during a show if the phone rings (so please don't call during Jeopardy) or if we are eating dinner. I can't even fast forward through commercials.

And, if there is a special TV event like, for example, Stephenie Meyer appearing on the Ellen show today, I can't record it with the touch of a button. If I wanted to record the show, I'd have to do an archaeological dig through a mountain of bulky video cassettes, find one that I could either record over or that was blank and insert it into the dusty VCR. Do not even get me started on what it would take to then program the VCR so that it recorded the correct channel at the correct time.

While these things all present a great inconvenience, it is almost nothing in comparison to the loss we sustained in our DVR's memory.

Max and Ruby: We had every single Max and Ruby episode ever, including all the holiday specials like "Ruby's Figure Eight" and "Max's Jack-o-lantern." In all probably 35 episodes were lost. Maybe more. Isaac had watched Max and Ruby every day and it only took seconds to choose and queue up an episode. Unfortunately, we don't even get the channel that runs Max and Ruby anymore (since we downgraded our service at the end of college football season early this year) so we won't be able to see Max and Ruby ever again. Unless we check them out of the library.

Masterpiece Theater: This might not sound like a great loss to some, but I had every single Jane Austen book/movie recorded and had only watched two. I also had the Keira Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice which has an incredible soundtrack and Matthew Macfadyen. (sniff, sniff)

The O'Reilly Factor: Again, many of you may be wondering why I'd be sad to lose an episode of The O'Reilly Factor. Well, did I happen to mention that it was the O'Reilly Factor where Bill O'Reilly read a comment I'd sent in on the "Viewer Mail" segment? Even though the comment was edited and he called me "sir" (Afton is a girl's name jerk!!), it would have been nice to have that little clip for posterity.

There are a few other minor losses. Robert lost a few football games, although he'd seen them already, so I don't really see what the big deal is. Ethan lost his collection of Pokemon episodes, which is also no skin off my back.

We should get our replacement DVR by Friday or Saturday. In satellite TV customer service talk that means: probably Monday or Tuesday.

3 comments:

Erika said...

Stephenie is going to be on Ellen? I better check and see what time it's on, maybe I missed it! I love watching Stephenie (I talk about her like she's a personal friend or something!) She's great and so interesting.

Anonymous said...

This happened to us last year and it was very sad. What made it worse was that our dish went out too. it was the night before Calvin's birthday party. I was totally stressed out, had company that just arrived for the weekend and I was on the phone with dish network troubleshooting for hours. When it was determined that my dvr needed replacing I about lost it, since I'm a frequent purchaser of pay per view movies. Sadness. Shortly after the dish and DVR were replaced our TV broke. This was also around the time that my computer caught fire and the motor on my treadmill went out. Could it get worse? Yes. Calvin burned his hand on my treadmill and i got a new Dell that sucked bad? Could it get worse? No. As you know, I got an iMac and the world was happy again. Everything else came together and in the end I was very pleased to be starting the new TV season with a fresh DVR just begging to be loaded up with new fall TV shows. All will be well and who knows, maybe you'll get an iMac too. :)

Debbie said...

I'm so glad we at least watched Pride and Prejudice before it died! (obviously I'm relieved it didn't die in the middle of pride and prejudice)

I am sad for all the others we missed!

If you want...I'll give you my Netflix password and you can watch the 1980s cheesy british versions ;) Actually we could watch them together on opposite ends of the world and then critic them! LOL