Thursday, March 08, 2012

Thank you, Time Warner

Last night (Wednesday, March 7, 2012) our “Life-is-Good” (LG) DVR recorded the evening TV-news from a channel I don’t have programmed.
Apparently the channel I have programmed was vaporized from our Time Warner cable-feed, so the DVR recorded an adjacent channel, NBC as opposed to ABC.
Seems there was a notification of changes in the channel-lineup, but it was obtuse. —I don’t remember it saying specifically what would happen.
I don’t know if I have this right, but in the great forward progress of TV transmission, some channels are offering both digital and analog transmissions.
The local ABC affiliate no longer is (as I see it) — perhaps just digital. Used to be they had both analog and digital, 13-0 and 13-1.
The other affiliates may have been only analog. The CBS affiliate was, and the NBC affiliate had both digital and analog: 10-1 and 10-0.
It seemed the dashed number indicated digital or analog. But maybe not.
Even the CBS affiliate is now both digital and analog, 8-1 and 8-0.
The ABC affiliate is just 13-0, and I can’t imagine it going back to just analog.
So 13-1 had been vaporized, the channel I had programmed.
We proceeded through the news of the NBC affiliate. —This is the only TV we watch, nothing else is worth watching, and even the news is debatable.
Then it was time to figure out what happened, plus reprogram the DVR.
The “Life-is-Good” owner’s-manual for the DVR is still at hand.
By now it was fast approaching 9 p.m., at which point us old geezers are at about 85 percent.
Like I’m supposed to make sense of mysterious technical esoterica when our mental-capacity is compromised.
I can hardly read, that is, concentrate on what I’m reading.
That’s a stroke-effect, inability to concentrate.
And imagine a 90-year-old Great Granny trying to figure all this out.
Exasperated, she calls Time Warner, and they send out a youngish service-techie.
“Simple, ma’am,” he says. “Just reprogram your DVR to record 13-0.”
“13-1, 13-0, HUH?”
Life used to be fairly simple. There were only three TV networks. Then there were four or five, and now there are 89 bazilyun, including the sanctimonious zealot network, the Rush Limbaugh bellicose network, and the “pig-out for Diabetes” network.
I stayed away from FOX with their obvious anti-liberal bias, and their penchant for airing steamy tabloid news. They should call it the T&A network.
Now we have to avoid cutesy Mother Sawyer at the ABC Evening News — a FOX wannabee.
I managed to reprogram the DVR to 13-0, plus the NBC Evening News. So much for Mother Sawyer.
By now it was approaching 10:30, down to about 65 percent.
An entire evening of computer machinations had been blown.
Thank you, Time Warner.

Addendum as of this evening:
Apparently the Local ABC affiliate’s digital feed was not vaporized. It just wasn’t working last night. Tonight it was back.
So blow another two hours deducing this, and then reprogramming the DVR from 13-0 back to 13-1.
Thank you again, Time Warner.

• RE: “Us old geezers......” —We’re both 68.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my ability to concentrate. I pretty much recovered.

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