Sunday, October 09, 2005

Comcast HD boxes unstable?

Perhaps it is just a random hardware failure. At least I hope.

When I first started this blog back up, part of me said " What if I don't have enough content to make it interesting". The other part said..."This is the reason you started it up again".

On a normal day, having your cable box fail is a non-issue. Put in context to all the other ridiculous crap like this, it makes for one tiring life. If I have one more piece of equipment fail, I am going to become very unstable.

Okay... so let me say this... I am a hardcore insomniac. So I know within a very small window of time when this box failed. Four mornings ago.

I am still a little paranoid about messing with the wiring on the heater, even though the more logical part of my mind knows the fuse will catch a problem. So when in the wee hours of the morning I start hearing an electrical "click" my brain pops wide awake. Ah... no alarms, so the house must not be burning down. Now, as I lie in bed, I start to diagnose where the sound is coming from. It's sort if a fun little game you play now days. "Where is that beep coming from", "what is that electrical noise", and so on.

I finally realize that it is our cable box cycling on and off, over and over again. Yeah... when you are an insomniac the sound of your cable box cycling can keep you awake. Though it is oddly loud. I manage to eventually get back to sleep, and break the news to my husband later that morning to the chorus of "what next".

It seems to stop at that point, and because lately at night we have only had time to watch Tivo stuff, we didn't realize the box had frozen on one channel.



Besides...when something happens with your cable, you can never realize it before Friday, so you never get it fixed before the weekend.

I guess I am have some residual bitterness... because one, this box is less then 2 months old. In the eight years we have lived in this place, we have only had to replace a bad box once, after several years of dutiful service. This one is failing after two months? And 2, my husband just informed me last week the roll out to HDTV has been moved back.

We didn't really intend to be ahead of the curve, but our 3 year old SONY TV died. My husband didn't want to get HD, but I convinced him that fully half the TVs in every store were HD, and that proved they were going to transfer sooner than later. We would have to upgrade within a couple of years anyway, so we should just buck up now. Plus...baby...HD looks so cool.

It just pisses me off... because we have like 20 HD channels, and fully half are f-ing sports. Listen Comcast! Women make up roughly half of the electronics buying decisions, and most of us hate sports. So as I am bitching about this.. my husband makes some snarkey comment about "what, you want HD Oprah"? Which I think.. no what are you, high?.. and then reconsider. Even HD Oprah is better than f-ing football. Besides... I dont think Oprah is on the weekends.

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