Bogieblog

X1 First Impressions

Last weekend I mentioned that the cable company was forcing me to change cable boxes as the one I got in 2013 would no longer be supported. It was delivered Wednesday afternoon and that night I decided to go ahead and set it up.

First things first, it was easy to swap out my old box to the new. I chose to use the enclosed cable instead of the old one because the old one wasn't long enough so I had to also use an extension with it. The cable is long enough, so that is less interference that could potentially happen. Although they also included a new connector to the TV, I used my existing one (fortunately my TV was equipped appropriately).

After watching online video on how to get the cable box to talk to my cable account, that went fairly seamlessly. And wonder of wonders - it automatically figured out my TV code and the remote both turns the TV on and off (as well as volume control).  So, it works my TV better than the old remote. 

I do have a few gripes however:

• The clock on the new box is too small for me to read from the couch (<10' away). Not the biggest deal, but irritating.
• The remote is smaller (black on in the picture), with smaller buttons, and the configuration of those buttons is different. Again, an irritant but after 10 years of being familiar with a configuration and being able to use the functions without looking, muscle memory is not my friend.
• The on/off button is so small and inconspicuous, it is hard to find (button at very top, right corner - you'll probably miss it unless you click on the picture to enlarge it). The old remote (silver) had a very conspicuous button (the red button toward the top, above the black button).
• I have no idea how to mute since there is no button for that (probably a voice command)

• Voice commands - not sure why that is a big deal. You still have to hold the remote and press a button. Oh, and without a list of those commands, not to mention actually remembering said list, that function is not very useful (yes, I could probably find it by googling, but I don't care about using it anyway). And as mentioned earlier, muting is probably by voice, but since I have to pick up the remote and push a button anyway, why not just have a mute button?
• They sent me a used box, which is fine and not the gripe. My gripe is that the box was not wiped from previous settings. How do I know? Because while setting up the recordings for a couple of shows, I had to delete about 10 current recordings, and  the same amount of future recordings that were set up.

Positives:

• As mentioned earlier, the remote will control all my TV functions (the ones I use anyway), so I was able to put the TV remote away. Now I just have two remotes - one for the cable box / TV, and one for the soundbar.
• I could have had my soundbar controlled thru the cable box remote, but I don't use the soundbar often, so I didn't want to do so.
• Speaking of soundbar, I was able to hook it into the cable box. So it is no longer hooked thru the TV which reduced one complication.
• The cable box is a lot quieter than the old one.

Both positive and negative: Whenever the remote is touched the buttons light up

• Helps with seeing the buttons and what they represent
• There are a lot of times I (or a cat) touch the remote without actually wanting to do anything with it.
• The power button does not have a light. Yeah, that teeny tiny button is not easy to find in any situation.

Everything else is just getting used to how it works. Getting to my recordings is different - not good or bad, just different.

Changes are Coming to a TV Near Me

After 10 years of having the same TV/DVR box, Xfinity is making me upgrade my cable TV equipment to X1. I got an email this morning about it and wondered if it was a scam since I haven't had any notices pop up when I check my email thru my account website. At the same time, the originating email address looked correct, but I wasn't convinced. Went to my account (never ever click on those email links) and looked around. Nope, no notice. So then I googled and found the article about older equipment that would not longer be supported and not function correctly at the end of May. The article gave me the way to check and sure enough, I've got to give in and get chit I don't need to replace equipment that is working totally fine for my simple needs.

I don't need voice command, I don't need streaming, and I'm not even sure that my old TV (2010 I believe) will work well with it. Dollars to donuts the X1 remote won't work with the TV - my current Comcast remote has only ever worked to shut the TV down, not to turn it on.

The only good thing is they "say" that there is no additional cost from what I'm paying to rent my old TV box. Not sure I believe that, but we'll see.

Sounds like it Will Bomb

Saw an add for True Grit the other day. No, not the classic True Grit, a new one.

No, No, NO - True Grit is a movie that ONLY John Wayne can do!

Chalk that up as another movie that won't make a dime off of me!

New BSG on the Horizon

We were Battle Star Gallactica fans (I loved both the original show and the new show). When Caprica came on air as a prequel to BSG we gave it a whirl. We tried mightily to like it, but it seemed to drag on and it was way too dark (both visually and story-wise) and deep for us. After missing parts of episodes because of VCR (aka VCR programmer) troubles, I finally just quit recording it.

Now there is news of the demise of Caprica, and the rise of a new BSG show - Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome. Don't see that it has actually been filmed yet, so it will be a while before it comes out, but I will certainly be checking it out when it makes it to SyFy.

H/T to Scott over at AMCGLTD.

New TV

I made enough from my side jobs to replace the dead TV - no more watching the 17" TV! We picked out a Samsung 46" wall-mounted (flat screen) TV. The wall mounting allows options when it comes to the furniture placement by freeing up our second longest wall. However, the best part is the crystal clear picture - as shown by this shot of watching the Belmont Stakes:

  

The two stereo cabinets fit underneath the TV, located on the shortest wall, so WS could get his chair away from the woodstove.

  

Ignore the shoes, boots and work stuff, Just imagine that this wall was completely taken up by the TV stand and two stereo cabinets - now it holds a whole lot of other stuff and the area that WS chair came from looks like this:

 

Oh, and the bookcase behind the chair in the WS Chair pic is new, to hold all the stuff tat used to be on top of the stereo cabinets.

I like the wall mount that gives us more flexibility, I love the picture on the TV, I'll just have to get a real guest chair now that we have room.
 
 

Transforming Movie

We finally watched the Transformers movie last night. Actually, that was good for us; we watched it the same year that we got it. While looking deciding what to watch, we came across stuff I bought a couple of years ago (and even longer). In fact, we came across Matrix 3, which we had tried to watch a year ago when we discovered that our DVD player was obsolete. We still haven't watched it.

Although the storyline was very predictable (boy meets girl blah, blah, blah, world is threatened by aliens, young people know all the answers while the older people are idiots, good aliens vs bad aliens etc.), the main reason I got the movie was for the special effects.

They. Did. Not. Disappoint!

Bonus - lots of humor; "I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?"

If we stay on schedule, we should watch another movie sometime in late January or early February. Only time will tell if it is an "old" movie or a newer movie.

And the Winner Is

The Iditarod has won an Emmy Award! More precicely, a documentery, Iditarod 2006: Mother Nature's Turn to Dance won. The sad part? I have the video but haven't had time to watch it - guess I really need to make the time huh?

Doing the Tape Shuffle

We have a real struggle going on in the Bogie household. We are mightily trying not to get too far behind, but the struggle is almost overwhelming.

We go to bed early enough that everything we watch on TV is taped for later viewing. There are 3 shows that we watch; 24, CSI (the original) and Battlestar Galactica. Our struggle is trying to keep the amount of tapes used to a minimum (thus our confusion as to which tape has the next episode of what we want to watch be kept to a minimum also).

See, we really only watch TV at dinner. Dinner is usually served somewhere between 7 and 8. I go to bed somewhere between 8 and 8:30. If we eat closer to 7, we have time to watch a taped show. If we eat closer to 8, we don't so we either turn to the Man channel and "watch" re-runs of CSI or go to the History channel and watch whatever is on.

Wednesday night we finally watched the Battlestar Galactica from 2 weeks ago, last week's is still on tape. Monday, we watched 24 from 2 weeks ago - another episode was taped that same night. Last night we got thru CSI from last week (only because I failed to turn off the VCR a couple of Thursdays ago, so the CSI from 2 weeks ago did not get taped), but last night it taped another episode.

We have 3 tapes going to date and the only reason that they are segregated by show is that we are only one week behind on everything. one tape held Battlestar Galactica, wth CSI next, then Battlestar Galactica again We got the first 2 shows watched, and that tape now resides above the machine for future watching.

Every new season is like this - our watching season doesn't end for at least a month after the shows have gone to reruns.

Movies haven't fared any better - I don't believe we have watched a movie since Thanksgiving when we watched Ice Age 2 over at Jimmy's. We have movies on DVD (we only watch 3-5 movies a year, so I am really picky about what I pick up), we have the Earth 2 DVD's (we loved that when it was on), we have 2 more seasons of 24 to catch up on (season's 3 and 4). At the rate we watch stuff, we will be retired before we actually see some of the stuff on that list.

We can't imagine how others manage to spend as much time in front of the tube as statistics say they do (and apparently, someone is making up for the time we don't spend watching).

Obsolete DVD

We have found out that our DVD player is obsolete. We have had that thing for some time (7 or 8 years). We bought one shortly after they first came out as affordable electronics - WS got it as either my Birthday or Christmas present.

This thing is an early model that has to stop and think every 20 minutes or so. So while watching a movie, there is a sudden freeze up of the frame - then about 5 seconds later it catches up and starts playing again. Knowing that the newer models don't do that, I've thought about getting a new player but have never justified getting one to myself for just that little fault.

Now we have a new problem; some DVDs won't play on it. If we watched movies closer to the time I buy them, we would have caught this fact sooner. We tried to watch the 3rd Matrix movie last week, but the DVD player kept saying "no disc". I figured the disc was messed up so I was going to exchange it (having bought it 6-12 months ago, I no longer have the reciept, so an exchange is the best that I could hope for).

Last night I decided to try it on my little TV in the workout room (it is a cheepie TV that has both DVD and VCR player built in) - and the DVD played fine in there. So, the format that the disc was created in is new enough, and different enough, that our DVD player doesn't recognize it at all - it's not a bad disc.

I wonder how many other movies are sitting there waiting for us to discover that we can't watch them!

BSG Cartoon Figures

For any BSG (Battle Star Galactica) fans out there - here they are Simpsonized.

I got this link from Galacticaa (while you are there, watch the Roomba video), which I found thru PoliSciFi, which I found thru PoliBlog which I found thru Jay.

What a convoluted web was woven on that one.