Technology Wars

Older technology appears to have declared war on our ability to watch Scrubs. First, the VCR upstairs decided that it wasn't going to do any timer-based recording -- or, upon further examination, any recording at all. So I bought a new Samsung VCR/DVD combo unit, which had to be swapped for a different one, since the first one wouldn't accept a tape.

Since then, the replacement unit has snapped one tape, which I attributed to a power outage problem. But last night, with a brand-new tape, it recorded only the audio for Scrubs and plenty of static where the video should have been. Since pressing the record button in a test later that evening recorded the same source in a perfectly normal way, I'm now a bit annoyed and trying to figure out if this unit is going back as well.

Then I read today in the newspaper that Comcast will be "upgrading" us to digital cable at "no cost" within the next year, which means that none of our cable-ready devices that record programs for us will work worth a damn going forward. *sigh*

So I'm getting a bit annoyed...

Technology Wars

Older technology appears to have declared war on our ability to watch Scrubs. First, the VCR upstairs decided that it wasn't going to do any timer-based recording -- or, upon further examination, any recording at all. So I bought a new Samsung VCR/DVD combo unit, which had to be swapped for a different one, since the first one wouldn't accept a tape.

Since then, the replacement unit has snapped one tape, which I attributed to a power outage problem. But last night, with a brand-new tape, it recorded only the audio for Scrubs and plenty of static where the video should have been. Since pressing the record button in a test later that evening recorded the same source in a perfectly normal way, I'm now a bit annoyed and trying to figure out if this unit is going back as well.

Then I read today in the newspaper that Comcast will be "upgrading" us to digital cable at "no cost" within the next year, which means that none of our cable-ready devices that record programs for us will work worth a damn going forward. *sigh*

So I'm getting a bit annoyed...