DVRs, frustrating technology, and Charley Chase (ever heard of him?)

[Sparkly]

I love silent movies. Most of them, anyway. They are usually on so late at night, though. So last Christmas we got ourselves a DVR -- the box from the cable company and also the player/recorder thing to make DVDs.

(The terminology alone confuses me! CDs, DVDs, DVRs, DVR-W's -- I think we should just call them all "records.")

So, just last night to figure out how to work it all! Actually, H2S Jr. came over and changed one setting. Good thing, because we were ready to take it back, thinking it was defective. Now I know how my parents felt with the VCR. (It had a digital clock that blinked "12:00" incessantly, which was annoying, so their solution was to stick a piece of black tape over it.)

I'd already been able to record programs to the box, but ran out of space on it and wanted to burn some things to DVDs in order to free up space for new recordings.

(And why are there five remotes and so many buttons? Couldn't they at least put all the "stops" in the same place or something? And I'm going to have to label each one somehow -- TV, DVD, Amp, etc. -- which reminds me of my parents labeling the controls for the stove burners because the little diagram confused them.)

Anyway, last night I started my uh, "record" collection, transferring some silent shorts. One I hadn't watched before -- "Dog Shy" with Charley Chase, who I'd never heard of but who is hilarious! At least I think so. I tried to get H2S interested. ("Just watch this one part! See, the lady told him to give The Duke a bath, and The Duke is a dog, but he thinks it's that snooty guy, see, so he's making bathing gestures at the guy to try to signal him, and the guy doesn't know why he's doing that...!!") He said "uh huh" and left.

Well, I'm happy about the whole thing, anyway.

[lavenderdiva]

1. oh, Sparkly-- you are waaaayyyyy ahead of me!

Christmas of 2006, Mr. ld and I decided our major gift to each other would be a DVD/VCR player/recorder. That way, I could transfer old videos to DVDs and new DVR recordings to DVD. However, in ALL this time, I still haven't figured out how to work the darned thing. Now, I can play DVDs on it. But just 2 weeks ago, I REREAD the instruction booklet, and got overwhelmed again. I have 2 engineering degrees to my name, and this machine has gotten the best of me. Not one transferred recording yet!!

I'm very impressed that you are onto the transfer stage, and are enjoying your movies!!! :hi:

[Matilda]

2. I'm about where you are, Lavender.

Mr M and I bought ourselves a multi-zone DVD for Christmas, mainly so I could buy all those Zone 1
DVDs that have never been released here, and probably never will be. Beautiful clear picture when
we play the DVDs we've bought but we face two major problems:

(a) The booklet which explains how to record is twenty pages long, and translated into English from
Korean by somebody who has only a slim grasp of English, and for all I know doesn't speak Korean
very well either; and

(b) It refuses to play rental DVDs of any sort - it stops every one at 40 minutes. Luckily, we kept
our old DVD player, because the rentals work on that, as they also do on our son's Playstation.

We're going to take it back next weekend, but there are only two legal multi-zone players available,
so if this glitch can't be fixed, we don't have a lot of choice. It's all such a disappointment - I
had a mental shopping list of all the unobtainable DVDs that I was going to buy.

[lavenderdiva]

4. that's weird that it won't play rental DVDs

do you think if you exchange it for the same model, that maybe something is just wrong with this one? That way, you could still have another place to go, if you have to return the exchange, and try the 2nd model.

I don't understand WHY manufacturers insist on making the instruction manuals read like they are Greek (or Korean in your case)... :-(

[Matilda]

5. We're going to try for a replacement,

as it's under warranty anyway. I don't think they both trying to fix things these days, they just
replace them. It's a good little unit (Panasonic), but it has this strange phobia about rental
discs.

But even if we get one that works, it's going to take an age to figure out how to record - Mr
Matilda is quite good at things mechanical and electrical normally, but this has so far defeated him.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I actually have vague memories of seeing Charlie Chase movies on TV

when I was a kid. But all I remember is the name.

There was a local station that ran what they called "old-time movies" on Saturday mornings.

(Ironically, those old-time movies were closer in time to my childhood--thirty years earlier-- than my childhood is to the present day--fifty years earlier.)