Farewell, old friend
Apr. 3rd, 2008 11:52 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raptorckLast night, Jenny came to me with some disturbing news. An old, dear friend of ours was not long for this world. Our loyal servant, a faithful companion who has been with me through five homes, and four moves, is now nearing his last breath.
Back on May 22nd, 2001, my Tivo was first activated, and changed how I watch TV forever. No more did I rush home in the hopes of catching the latest episode of my favorite TV show. No longer did I miss shows because I was working late, or sleeping in. The Saturday mornings of my youth were reborn as Saturday afternoons.
Of course, I knew this day was coming. The Series 2 Tivos were tempting, but I decided to go on with my faithful Sony Series 1 Tivo, knowing that it provided what I needed, at the very least. Sure, it needed a phone line to grab guide data. Sure, the encoder occasionally glitched out and demanded a full reboot. These things happen, I figured. Eventually, sometime last year, the onboard modem failed. Undaunted, I hooked up an external modem to the serial port and coaxed back into working. (Yes, I still HAD my old 56k Sportster.) All was well, aside from the need to reprogram the modem itself in the event of a power failure.
Last night, though, we turned on the TV to be welcomed by glitchy video, an unusably slow menu system, and a lack of response to 50% of the remote commands. After a couple of reboots, we decided that it was time to let the Tivo go to that great hardware pile in the sky, and I reluctantly ordered a replacement Series 2 unit, which should arrive on Friday.
It's not going to be the same. The remotes are different, I'll have to reprogram the season passes, and it'll go back to recommending every cartoon on the planet for the first few weeks. It'll grab everything on Food Network and the Travel Channel, and it might even mistakenly bring home a rerun of Mind of Mencia, since Tivo doesn't understand the difference between good comedy and badly stolen comedy. It may even decide to start grabbing the campiest Sci-Fi imaginable, all based on me watching a single episode of Doctor Who.
It's not going to be the same, but I'll learn to live with it.
Back on May 22nd, 2001, my Tivo was first activated, and changed how I watch TV forever. No more did I rush home in the hopes of catching the latest episode of my favorite TV show. No longer did I miss shows because I was working late, or sleeping in. The Saturday mornings of my youth were reborn as Saturday afternoons.
Of course, I knew this day was coming. The Series 2 Tivos were tempting, but I decided to go on with my faithful Sony Series 1 Tivo, knowing that it provided what I needed, at the very least. Sure, it needed a phone line to grab guide data. Sure, the encoder occasionally glitched out and demanded a full reboot. These things happen, I figured. Eventually, sometime last year, the onboard modem failed. Undaunted, I hooked up an external modem to the serial port and coaxed back into working. (Yes, I still HAD my old 56k Sportster.) All was well, aside from the need to reprogram the modem itself in the event of a power failure.
Last night, though, we turned on the TV to be welcomed by glitchy video, an unusably slow menu system, and a lack of response to 50% of the remote commands. After a couple of reboots, we decided that it was time to let the Tivo go to that great hardware pile in the sky, and I reluctantly ordered a replacement Series 2 unit, which should arrive on Friday.
It's not going to be the same. The remotes are different, I'll have to reprogram the season passes, and it'll go back to recommending every cartoon on the planet for the first few weeks. It'll grab everything on Food Network and the Travel Channel, and it might even mistakenly bring home a rerun of Mind of Mencia, since Tivo doesn't understand the difference between good comedy and badly stolen comedy. It may even decide to start grabbing the campiest Sci-Fi imaginable, all based on me watching a single episode of Doctor Who.
It's not going to be the same, but I'll learn to live with it.
![[identity profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 04:11 pm (UTC)Farewell, little Tivo.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 05:11 pm (UTC)No, Tivo! We do that OUTSIDE.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 04:39 pm (UTC)For soem reason it thinks I wnat to watch Boobahs since I got a season pass for Transformers Animated o.O
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 04:52 pm (UTC)I have two series 2, one from Toshiba with a DVD player (no peanut remote, sadly) and a used regular version I got off Amazon back when I lived in the barracks (8 months without tivo was not an option).
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 05:03 pm (UTC)