| Sunday,
February 25, 2001 I hate consumer electronics. I
particularly hate Sony. [Later: let me ammend that. But I am not as
fond of Sony as I have been in the past.]
I have a Sony Trinitron Kv-20VM20 Television/VCR. The remote
controller has gone wonky. I want to buy a new one. Try going to the Sony
web site and finding that. Their search engine turns up thousands of
useless items on remote controller, nothing on the model number -- it is
as if they never made one of those -- and no way to figure out if I am
drawing dead. It's possible there is a new controller that would work for
my TV/VCR for sale -- but I have no way of knowing that. This is insanity.
I suppose I will have to go down to the store and ask. The local Good
Guys seems overstocked with people who don't speak English well and whose
notion of salesmanship is to stand around talking to each other until one
can be bothered to actually listen to a question, only to have no answer.
[The answer is 1-800-REMOTES and I will do that.]
I thought Fry's and computer stores were bad. Hah. They are marvels of
competence compared to the consumer electronics stores.
I even bought a new VCR hoping that I would be able to tape a couple of
shows I won't be home to watch. So far the only way I have been able to
record is to set the TV so that I see the program, and record from there.
There is supposed to be a way to let the TV stay off, or be on a different
channel from what the VCR is recording, but there is not. Not with the
Adelphia digital signal anyway. The VCR has to be set to Channel 2, and
the Cable box to the channel you want. Then it will record. Any other
combination -- a different channel number on the VCR -- records nothing
but static. Of course the people at Good Guys assured me this would not be
the case, that this would work with the new Adelphia system. If so I can't
make it happen.
Now I could understand perhaps that a commercial VCR box could not
decode channel 207 or one of the other premium channels; but what I wanted
was on 28, which comes on the cable as 6, the last Inspector Morse
episode. With three TV's and VCR's including the new one I wasn't able to
do it. Timers aren't working right, signals aren't coming right, and
nothing works. I make no doubt I'll be able to buy the darned tape (and
for less than a VCR and tapes) and I'll do that, but this is infuriating.
The Cable Guy hooked the Cable Signal Box at the top of the stream,
then has both rf and audio/video (3 RCA jack cables) connecting to the VCR
and thence to the TV. That works to play videos, and I can record but only
if the VCR channel is 3 and the cable box is set to what I want. I am
wondering if the VCR ought to be upstream? Probably not. The Cable Box
User's Guide shows a button called the TV/VCR bypass which is ONLY on the
remote for the Cable Box; perhaps this will do it? It says "a
cable-ready TV is required for this function" but of course it does
not define "cable-ready" TV; and is that the same when you have
a digital cable signal? So I suppose I will be taking this thing
back to the Good Guys with all the papers and getting my money back (well
my Amex charge cancelled) since it certainly does not work as they said it
would. I'll make one more try, but my guess is that it will not in fact
record anything that hasn't been decoded by the Cable Box.
Of course the Cable Box is a Motorola DCT 2000 and the User Guide is
only a little better than useless. It begins with the usual lawyerese
warnings that you should not tear out an eyeball and put it into the box,
and you might be electrocuted by using this and Motorola is not
responsible for anything ever. After pages of that it tells me that my DCT
2000 "includes one or more of the following features" and has a
list. No way to tell whether the features exist or not. So much for
clarity. And in fact the remote that I have, which comes from Adelphia,
not from Motorola, does NOT have the TV/VCR bypass button.
State of the Art digital consumer terminal. Bah. Its so state of the
art they don't know what features it has, only that it may include some.
It tells me to be sure to read my electronic program guide instruction
manual, only there is no such thing. This is and a Xeroxed sheet telling
what channels are available are IT for instructions.
And it sure doesn't tell me if I can record one channel while watching
another. With old analog TV I certainly could, but if there's a way to do
it with this one I have not found it. I am now convinced it can't be done,
which means the Good Guys lied to me about the unit I bought just for that
purpose. And, I suspect, Adelphia knows all about this. You can record off
the TV but ONLY the translated signal; there is no way to watch one
channel and record another, and I bet that breaks Adelphia's heart.
Now it may be that I am unduly harsh here, and the problem is mine. the
box was wired up by the Cable Guy and my installation of the new VCR was
identical to his; I'll now take it all apart so I can return the new unit
since my old one would do anything this one will do. And I'll wait.
Eventually someone will sell a VCR that will let me record without the TV
being on, or record one channel while watching another. Eventually. Or,
perhaps, I'll learn it was all my fault for not understanding it, but I
don't think so.
Incidentally, I can't get the DVD player to work with this setup
either. How wonderful. They have it feeding into the VCR with RCA
connectors, but that doesn't ever get to the TV set.
I hate consumer electronics.
Back to my AAAS report including Nano-Technology.
There are a few more addresses on badmail, and I have corrected about a
dozen sent to me. To repeat a notice:
 
Notice to Subscribers: IF YOU DID NOT get a test mailing recently, PLEASE
CHECK BADMAIL page. I have received a
surprising number of rejections to this test mailing, some from people
with whom I have had recent correspondence. If you're on that badmail
page, it is from this recent test mailing, and there is something wrong
here. In some cases I may have two addresses, one original and one from a
renewal, in which case please tell me which one I can DELETE. I really
would like to make this list current...
Thanks!
I see my squirrel and the birds are fighting over the bird seed. It's
raining and they have to share. I suppose they will manage...
OK it is clear: Good Guys steered me wrong. The VCR box they sold me
does NOT decode digital signal meaning that the Motorola Cable Box has to
decode it and does one and only one channel at a time, meaning that it is
impossible to record from one channel while listening to another.
So I will take this thing back. Eventually there will be a new
generation of VCR but not this one. The one I used to have will do
what the new one will do so I will put that one back in the stream.
I still do not know how to make the DVD player work but I will not for
the moment worry about it since I generally watch DVD's on a computer
monitor screen anyway.
But the bottom line is that if you go digital cable, you have given up
the ability to record anything you are not watching. Period. And that
condition will remain until there are "digital ready" TV's and
VCR's, and they do NOT HAVE THOSE AT GOOD GUYS, despite their telling me
they did. I will take this one back: stay tuned for results on that.
As to Morse I have ordered the Last Episode from Amazon.
Now back to work on the AAAS report which is already about 2500 words
long. This will be for www.BYTE.com and
I will then do another on nanotechnology which will go first to
subscribers. There is more gold in that mine after those two, and we will
see what I do with it. This was a pretty rich session this year. And
of course Internet World is coming up fast. No rest for the wicked...
I have learned a lot about DVD, Digital signal cable, and such like.
See next week's mail and view.
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