azurelunatic | I am one of those people.

I have one of those systems. Ish.

Penny Arcade: Tales from True Life

So I got a tivo at a garage sale, right? And then the blamed thing stopped working, and I found a guy (as you do), and he replaced the power supply (which was my hypothesis) and then I brought it home and it totally didn't pick up any signal from the cable, yet the same cable plugged into the tv worked just fine.

A lot of argh later,

ursamajor was cursing in IRC because Comcast was dicking around with her cable and it was all digital now, and it wasn't working with their old tivo.

*facepalm* Why yes, it was entirely possible that my tivo woes could have been caused by Comcast changing stuff on me while the tivo was out for repair, and it would explain the much newer tv having no problems.

So a little tech time later (hooray for live chat online, much nicer than phone calls) they allowed as how they should be giving me a converter box, then, and thus I dropped by the local office this morning, and installed it this evening.

I have the tv remote. I have the tivo remote. I have the dinky little dvd player remote. Now I have the remote for the digital converter box. That makes four remotes.

I, just. Eleven years and change ago, there I was sitting on an unfamiliar couch, wrestling with an unfamiliar multi-device, multi-remote system, feeling helpless to the point of manic hilarity. Today, I have one.

I, uh. ... I love you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't live at my permanent address 7/12 months of the year and we have the most complicated AV system known to man. It drives me insane because we get new devices every time I come home and I'm just :| about it.

List of devices hooked up to a single tv: cable box, wii, xbox 360, dvd recorder, 3D blu-ray player, PS3, AV receiver, and I can plug in the PS2 or Gamecube or N64 if I feel like crying maybe.

So the family invested in a universal remote. It has pictures! I just press the picture and it makes everything work. Except for how occasionally it doesn't work and I'm waving it around going "it's not working!!!" and my dad is like "YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO BREAKS THIS REMOTE. YOUR 80 YEAR OLD GRANDMA CAN WORK THIS REMOTE." Which is true.

The moral of this story is that I hate remotes.

In theory at least one of my remotes is supposed to be universal. In practice, I am waiting on a particular cable.

In theory we have three remotes, but because everything's hooked up through HDMI and is all the same brand, we can control most of everything from any remote and all the important stuff from the most recent remote.

But for a while it was looking like changing channels would involve a juggling act, poss. with things on fire and/or chainsaws.

Chainsaws sounds exciting.

We have one of those systems too. To the point where we have a FOUR-PAGE write-up (with pictures!) for my parents for which remote goes with which system. And they still don't get that if you want to change the volume, you need to press AUX on the silver remote and then press the volume keys.

My daughter, who of course is here all the time, has now been able to show them how to get to stuff via On Demand. :)

I think Mama still has and uses my guide on how to change the clock on the complicated stereo they got in about '95. She hauls it out two times yearly.

We have one of those systems. We also have one of the better universal remotes out there programmed with all the crap you have to do to switch between systems (Dish network, PS3, XBox360, and a media computer are our four primary inputs). Generally speaking, it gets it right the first time. If it doesn't, you press help. It asks you relevant questions about the setup as it actually physically is (is the TV on, is the receiver on, is the TV set to HDMI1, etc), you answer, and based on that and what the setup should be, it attempts to fix the problem. It very, very rarely fails past that.

I did, once upon a time, dub the universal remote of doom the remote of geekake. It arrived in our house and the boys geeked all over it. So, you know, what else do you call it? *g*

That sounds like an amazing remote.

oh, lord, yes!

At least now with the proper cable, the tivo's able to control the digital cable box. So that's one fewer remote to wrangle on a daily basis.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/05/09

I am one of those people.

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