The First Circle of Limbo

As you may have noticed, posting has been even lighter than usual lately. That's because I've moved to the sticks, and not everything is unpacked yet. And Verizon won't have DSL for my line until next week.

I could live without DSL, as long as I had satelite TV, but guess what? That's right when the DirecTv dish mover guys came out to the new homestead, they said the trees were blocking the signal. Mother Nature's always out to screw us, the bitch. So this is a major crisis no DSL and no TV. I'm a DirecTivo junkie. I'm one of the lucky ones who got a Tivo from DirecTv instead of a POS DirecTv DVR and I want to keep using it. So what to do? That's right, the day after we moved in, I broke out the chainsaw and started knocking those satelite signal impeding bastards down. It aso helped that some of the trees were threatening to fall on the house, so the missus was like "WTF are you waiting for, get rid of them?" So it's win-win. Now we wait for Thursday to see if the DirecTv boys can get a signal.

So what if the unthinkable comes to pass? Then I'm stuck with alot of fire wood. Well then I'm hoping Verizon has FIOSTV in my neck of the woods, cause I'm never going back to Cablevision. FIOSTV would be cool, as they have a media center DVR that can stream out recorded shows to other recievers in the household.  

I'm really disappointed that more TV providers aren't taking advantage of Tivo's technology. Oh anyone can build a DVR/PVR. You get a Hauppauge card and a PC, and you can start recording right away (I'm considering one to compliment my DirecTivo). But if you want to record shows from a satelite or cable provider, you need a decoder card and then things get complex. How does the PVR control the reciever box? How does it get a programming schedule? There are ways, but is it worth the time and effort? Tivo does that all for you, plus it has an excellent interface and technology that makes skipping around a recording much easier than what provider DVRs can do. The Tivo remote is much easier to use than the DirecTv remote, its more intuitive and the function buttons are more logically oriented. Plus if you have multiple Tivos you can network them together to transfer shows from one Tivo to another, which is similar to the functionality Verizon is offering with FIOS. I know Rupert Murdock made DirecTv ditch Tivo in favor of a company he had stock in, but what about the other providers?

Posted by: Iblis at 02:30 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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