Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Life's Little Annoyances

I don't have a Tivo.  I have a DVR that's part of my cable box.

Every once in awhile, my cable company uploads new and exciting features to my DVR.  They never tell me about it in advance.  All of a sudden, I'll just discover a new menu option that wasn't there before.  Like, just a little while ago, they finally allowed me to start watching a program I was recording at the beginning of the program -- rather than joining the recording in progress and having to rewind to the start.  That was a great little upgrade.

A week or so ago, they added another speed to Fast Forward and Rewind.  Previously, each function had three speeds.  I generally used the third speed only when rewinding to the beginning of a program.  For normal fast-forwarding over commercials, I'd use Speed Number 2.  I'd grown accustomed to it, and had gotten pretty good at knowing when to stop fast-forwarding because the commercial was over and the show was back on.

Well.  Speed four just messed all of this up.  In addition to adding the fourth (and faster) speed, they recalibrated the first three.  Fast forwarding on speed 2 feels like I'm wading through molasses.  But fast forwarding on speed 3 is too fast, and I end up stopping it too late and having to rewind.

I cannot believe how much trouble this little upgrade in speeds is causing me.  I guess I'd just taken for granted how well speed 2 and I got along.

I'll miss it.  (sniff)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You have my deepest sympathy. I still mourn the demise of my old Panasonic VHS which I could cue to the start of a show after a commercial without a hitch. Unlike this POS Sony VHS that replaced it.  
And that all took place seven years ago...