Ben Franklin is frequently quoted as having said “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Let’s extend a bit further the use of consumer goods as a tool for fathoming the inscrutable motives of the omnipotent: the cable company DVR is proof that Comcast hates you.
Charles and I have had a lot of audiovisual excitement over the past few months; the Comcast DVR was a low point. You might think that the “last” and “exit” buttons would each behave in a consistent manner regardless whether you’re in the “On Demand” or “Settings” menus, but you’d be wrong. You might think that a device aimed at people who’ve just blown a lot of money on a fancy new TV wouldn’t employ a bargain basement upconverter that leaves everything rife with MPEG artifacts, but you’d be wrong. You might think that you wouldn’t have to look at advertisements every time you try to search a schedule of shows you’ve already paid for, but — wait, how naive are you?
A few weeks ago Jason let me know that Woot was offering a great deal on refurbished Tivo HDs and I jumped on it. Yesterday Comcast sent a guy over to install the requisite cable card, and I’ve been happily BOOPing and BABOOPing since. Man, is it great. Yeah, it’s a little more sluggish than the DirecTivo we used to have. But it’s comforting just the same. And, crucially, I no longer feel like a malevolent machine intelligence is sitting under my TV, whiling away its endless sentence in Ikea prison by subjecting me to subtle psychological torture. THERE ARE FOUR (front panel) LIGHTS!
Oh man. If you hear of anything like this again, let me know. I’m cringing at the idea of giving up my beloved TiVo for the Flophouse’s Comcast monstrosity.
Will do — you might want to consider installing the Woot widget, though (and Growl, naturally). They have deals on Tivos pretty regularly, I believe. I got mine for $180.