Mark Richards

XML

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

No Time

Since I have had very little time to post while here at work, I may have to start posting at home in the evening.

Now that I have a free second (and a second is almost accurate), I have a few things I would like to mention.

If you have not seen the new Ben Stiller movie, Dodgeball, you are seriously missing out. While there are not too many one liners that you will take away like "You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?" from Happy Gilmore, you will constantly be bombarded with so much nonsense that you will be laughing the entire time. Thumbs up from me.

About a month ago, one of the guys here at work got me hooked on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now I get up at 7AM and watch one of the two episodes that air on FX every morning, thus making me rush to get to work on time. Had someone asked me if I watched Buffy about a year ago, I would have laughed at them. But now, I am hooked. The series finale aired this morning and like every episode to this point, it was awesome. I think the show is so good and so well done that I am considering purchasing the DVD's. And to think, this great TV action/drama came from such a crappy B movie starring Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry.

And for my final note, I am now the proud renter of a Comcast DVR. For only $10 a month ($5 if you are already renting a high definition cable box already), I now have the capability to record any program on TV including HD broadcasts! This is very exciting for me because I have been looking into investing in TiVo for a while, but have had trouble rounding up the funds to do so. This solution makes much more sense for me financially than TiVo since there is no need to purchase any hardware and the subscription is between $5 and $10 less expensive a month. Granted, there are some bugs in the Comcast DVR system like my inability to skip ahead days in the guide, but those small issues do not outweigh the benefits I am seeing (like recording that second episode of Buffy that comes on at 8AM on FX).

For those of you thinking of getting a DVR need to realize that the experience is slightly different than normal digital cable. First off, the guide is a little different. The layout is bunched up more and the ads are larger, but it is lightning fast. I did not like it at first, but it has grown on me. Secondly, the box itself makes some noise, but I expected that since the DVR stores its information on a typical hard drive, thus requiring many disk I/O's. Finally, my biggest issue: changing from one channel to another is very slow. I think it has something to do with the recording of live television and the necessity to delete the current recording and start a new recording for a new channel, but I am not positive. I am sure Comcast will get that worked out. Overall, another thumbs up from me.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home