Sunday 23 September 2007

Digital killed the video *

Dear god, I just had a phone call from my mother, in tears, very upset because she missed the tennis on TV because she can't figure out how to use digital TV and the HDD/DVD/VHS video. There's two remote conrtrols, when the folk on the BBC say “its on the i channel now press the red button” she has a choice of about four red buttons to press, some of which start things recording, some don't do anything and some seem to delete all the channels.

I gave up on TV years ago, halfway through The West Wing when they started putting things on on times when I wasn't in, and it was easier to buy the DVD instead videoing it to watch later. I missed Heroes when it was first on a digital channel, and only caught it on terrestrial when the Beeb had a catch up weekend, even then I missed episodes 7-12, I'll get the DVD box set later.

My attitude, doesn't however help poor mother in tears, so she moves on to phoning my brother, but would he actually be able to help, I'm pretty sure he has his TV set up dfferently, he has a different time shift device (video recorder) and he has a Sky Box.

I can buy mother the Tim Henman's Greatest Hits DVD later. Right now my question is, does anyone have their Digital TV/Terrestrial TV/games console/HDD/DVD/VHS recorder system set up properly. So that they only use one remote control for going through the channels, accessing interactive features, recording and seting the video to record stuff in the future and can change to their games system, without having to get up and swap over SCART sockets? Is this actually possible?

Everyone I know either has parts of the system missing, or too many remotes, or has to get up to manually swap things over.

Is my mother, in her sixties, bless, 'er, doomed?

She was still in tears when she hung up. And I feel a wee bit guilty, not the usual post phonecall guilt where I'm just going through the motions, but genuine, damsel in distres and I'm hundreds of miles away and unable to help guilt.

Fuck, is that even justified?

Ah fukkit.

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