DVR Is Dead...

Tuesday night I went in the family room after dinner and noticed an odd sequence of numbers on our cable company provided DVR box. Turning on the television, I could sit and watch the box go through a sequence of trying to start up and connect to the network, only to fail and reboot. This happened over and over. Not sure when it started per se. It was fine Monday night. I'm thinking at some point during Tuesday.

So, I called the local cable company and first tried the automated service route. You know the ones - where you speak answers to the prompts and it gives you other prompts. I should have known that was a recipe for wasted time. Sure, I can see it helping with a lot of simple problems but mine clearly wasn't so. Finally, I got to an agent. I gave him my info and details of the problem, then he said he would have to transfer me to an expert on our particular box. Fine.

Then we got disconnected.

I called back again and luckily got a person right off the bat. I explained what the problem was briefly and how I was going to be transferred to an expert on my box when the call got dropped. Turns out this guy was the expert. Lucky me, and lucky him. Saved me going on another tirade while being on hold, a tirade which my wife just tuned out entirely.

Anyway, we tried a few things only to conclude that, yes, the DVR seemed to be suffering a hardware failure. He said a tech would have to be scheduled to come out. The earliest was Thursday morning. Ugh. Couldn't be out of work so we took Saturday morning instead. We first however signed up for the $4.95 monthly line service contract so that we would not have to pay the technician for a service call (they get covered by that).

So, I got done with the phone call just in time to turn on the tiny TV in the kitchen so we could watch our Tuesday night shows on FOX (since the cable still worked on other sets in the house). No pausing though or rewinding. Kind of missed that already.

I'm going to assume that also gone was anything recorded for the week. Bummer. My wife did not see most of the Monday comedies so we'll have to wait on the reruns. Gone too were the two days of soaps. Oh well. We had been talking about making a break from them anyway. Perhaps the DVR failure was a sign - a way for us to quit cold turkey. I'm also going to assume I'll have to reset up my "to record" list should we require a new box - I'm thinking that's going to be the case. Again, probably a good thing. A good time to reassess viewing habits.

Maybe my DVR box knew about the writers' strike and was just trying to throw me into the "no new TV" deep-end. ...nah...