Time Warner DVR sucks

After moving from an area covered by Charter to an area covered by Time Warner, I had no choice but to switch my cable provider. Right off the bat, I found many things lacking in the Motorola DVR that TW provided me. Most of it, I've learned to live with, but the most recent offense... there's just no excuse.

What's bad to begin with:

• Search. Having to scroll through each letter instead of letting us use the arrow keys for an on-screen keypad.
• Program Guide. Time Warner's program guide rarely has sufficient information on programs more than a couple of days ahead of time. If it's going to be three days before the program airs, chances are it doesn't have anything in the description for it. If it's more than a week, you might not even get the program's title. Some programs never get any useful information, even when it's airing. Why is this important? Well, without having any info about the program, it doesn't know if the program is new or not.
  
• After setting a "series recording" (TW's version of TiVo's "season pass"), if you delete a program you've just finished watching, and the same episode is aired again a few hours later (this happens a lot on HBO/Showtime shows), it will try to record it again. Why? These re-airing are not new anymore! Ugh. I constantly have to look through my "future recordings" list to remove shows I know I've already watched.
• Have too many upcoming shows set to not record? If you set one more to not record, something else you've previously set to not record will want to record again. WTF?
• Just added a new series to your DVR? Better check your upcoming recordings again, because guess what? The episodes you've told it not to record all think they need to be recorded again.

The worst thing it just did? This week alone, two of the shows I've set to always record new episodes were not recorded. And there were no scheduling conflicts, either. One was on Monday, for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I've set to record along with Chuck, but there was nothing else on that it needed to record. Strangely enough, it recorded Prison Break just fine. So I was forced to download the episode from online.

Just a few hours ago, it failed to record Dirty Sexy Money, when there was nothing else on that I wanted to record. This episode had the return of Samaire Armstrong, the whole reason I started watching this show to begin with, and what does it do? It didn't record it. Instead, it recorded a rerun True Blood, which I've already watched on Sunday. What a piece of crap this DVR is.

Peter Griffin is a Ballchinian

Okay, so a while back, they were airing Men in Black II on cable, and I decided to watch it again. In one scene, as part of the punchline, they had aliens who had weaknesses that could be easily exploited, and one such alien was a "Ballchinian."

When I saw him, I immediately thought of Peter Griffin of Family Guy. See the resemblance?

Finally

After nearly a week without [HD]TV (I still have a TV in my bedroom, but it's not HD, and I don't have DVR in there), my new TV finally arrived today. It's a lot lighter than the other one, and the menu system is better. I'll have to check the setup for my DVD player later.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

The HDTV I bought about 22 months ago stopped working last night.

Last summer, we found out that this model had overheating issues. Basically, when it got too hot, it will shut down by itself, even though the LED indicator will show it as still on, and the power switch will not respond. Luckily, all you had to do in this instance was to use the power switch in the back, and it will work again.

I thought I wouldn't have to deal with this problem again, after moving closer to the beach, since it was generally cooler here than in the valley. But about a month ago, there were a few heatwaves where the temperature got up to 90°, and I had to place a fan behind the TV to keep it cool. After the heatwave ended, however, it would still turn itself off randomly, much to my annoyance, and last night, it did so for the last time. It would not turn back on again.

I suppose a TV repair shop might be able to fix it, so I'll probably try that when I get a chance.

Before that happens, I still need a TV, so I've order a new one from NewEgg. Of course, this being the weekend, the earliest they will ship it would be Monday, but since they're based in City of Industry, hopefully it will arrive on Tuesday...