Fryed

[billroper]

I bought a new DVR for the bedroom that's essentially identical to the one in the family room, save for being labeled Magnavox instead of Philips. I did so partly because it will tune the digital HD channels off of cable so that we can watch them upstairs and partly so that we can watch shows like CSI and Medium in the bedroom after the girls have gone to bed. Katie's getting to an age where there are things on those shows -- mostly dead people -- that I would just as soon not have to explain. :)

Of course, I've done this just in time for the end of the regular TV season. Timing is everything, I suppose.

Now the DVR has an HDMI connector and the set in the bedroom is old enough that it only takes DVI input, so I needed an appropriate cable. The most likely cheap place to find one was Fry's, so we went down there after lunch and I ended up buying a standard HDMI cable and a small adapter, on the grounds that I might be able to reuse and HDMI cable should the set in the bedroom buy the farm. And that was all I was going to get.

Until we were heading for the door and I realized that I needed a phone for my home office so that I could hook it to the VOIP line that I'm getting when I start working from home. And I wanted it to have a speaker phone in the base unit, unlike our current set of portables, and I wanted it to have multiple extensions so I could grab one no matter where I was at. So I bought that too.

And I was on my way out the door when I saw the Mother's Day display which included a cordless mouse and I realized that the Acer mouse on the new computer is really pretty cruddy, so I went back and bought a nice Microsoft Comfort Mouse with the magnifier function. And daisy_knotwise wanted a mouse pad, so I bought the one with the puppies on it, which has delighted Katie.

So I was heading down the checkout line and the rack of DVDs caught my eye, because it included Mamma Mia. And I threw a copy in the cart, figuring that Katie dancing to the music videos at the end of the show would be less annoying than her dancing to the very loud demo song built into the keyboard that catalana kindly passed along to us when she moved. (We don't mind her playing on the keyboard -- it's when the demo song is blasting at top volume that we start to go slowly insane. Ok, maybe rapidly insane. :) )

Not bad for going to the store for a cable.

When I got home, I wired up the new mouse and the DVR, finding Katie's missing copy of Bolt (which she was trying to get us to buy a Blu-Ray copy of at Fry's -- Gretchen stubbornly explaining that we don't have a Blu-Ray player, nor will we at any time in the foreseeable future) stuck on top of the old Toshiba DVR that doesn't tune the digital channels, but which does have TV Guide On Screen, which makes it excellent for hunting down My Friends, Tigger and Pooh on the Disney Channel. Everything is working, Katie is watching Bolt, Julie is napping, Gretchen is relaxing.

And me? I'm going to go call up Speakeasy and order my DSL upgrade and VOIP line.

Comments

[born-to-me.livejournal.com]

We hit a similar point with Gabriel. For a long time he barely looked at the t.v. unless one of "his shows" was on. I think it was a combination of a joke sequence on Family Guy and later him staring at the screen during NCIS that made us realize it was time to start instituting "Grownup T.V. Time" upstairs.

[billroper]

Family Guy is pretty much off the menu now. Sadly, Katie's seen it often enough to point out the box set at Fry's...

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Mind sharing the exact model you bought? stevemb & I are in the market. How do you like the user interface?

I like Medium a lot, too. It's actually a rather sweet family show in its own bizarre way. Pity it's unlikely to be renewed now that 10PM on NBC is going all Leno all the time on weeknights.

[billroper]

Here's the DVR. It's basically just a VCR style interface -- you set up the programs by date or day of the week, time, and channel. But it has a clear QAM tuner, so it picks up all the local HD channels and tunes them. The recording is SD, but it looks good on our TVs.

Medium is apparently going to be renewed, but they have to sort out Patricia Arquette's contract, as it calls for 22 episodes, and NBC wants to order 13. Mind you, they seem to extend that order every year when the new shows they like crater, but...

Chuck is apparently going to be renewed as well. I haven't gotten into it, because it's on opposite How I Met Your Mother, but I have friends who like it a lot.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Thanks! We're actually familiar with DVRs; we're looking to replace one that died. When I asked about the user interface, I was thinking of things like ease of menu navigation, entering names of recordings/naming burned discs, etc. Sorry if I was unclear.

That's good news about Medium. Surprising though, since drama shows tend to get more expensive each season of their life. NBC must have sod-all in the pipline. A lot of people I know are going to be very happy about Chuck as well.

Edited for clarity.

[billroper]

The menus have seemed pretty reasonable. I haven't tried entering any names for the recordings or burning disks off this unit yet.

I mentioned the VCR-style interface to differentiate it from the DVRs that provide a program guide such as TV Guide On Screen.