The end of an era

Don Herbert, a.k.a. Mr. Wizard, died on Tuesday. I know that I owe a fair bit of my own interest in science and geekery to his Nikelodeon show. On the bright side, I just learned that his shows are available on DVD so I can pack them away for when the kids get a little older, or when I get a hankering for a touch of nostalgia.

Damn you, DVR!

Having a DVR has been great. We watch the shows we like on our own schedule and don't have to sit through commercials if we don't want to; but I do always go back and watch the new Mac commercials if I see one I don't recognize. When I fall asleep during Heroes because my pain medication makes me drowsy, I can watch it again at my leisure. It also gives us the ability to pick and choose the order in which we watch our backlog of shows and that's what I'm bickering about today. We've been busy recently and are probably a week and a half behind the shows we like. The advantage of this is having the opportunity to watch two episodes of The Office back to back (which really worked to our advantage with the Dwight quitting cliffhanger!), but the disadvantage is that (damn it!) it wasn't until last night that I saw the advertisement for the competition to win a spot as a dead body in a future episode of CSI. I mean… how cool would that be? When we saw the commercial I got pretty excited, but when I realized that they tape in California (the show is based in Las Vegas, of course) I figured that even if I won I would have to pay to fly myself out for the taping. Not the case (see: "7. Prize:"). They are paying to fly the winner and a guest out to L.V. (coach, but hey, its free!), and for 2 nights in a hotel. This, my friends, is one heck of a disadvantage to DVR. Nothing would be cooler than being John Doe #165.

Trip report: Switching to Dish Network

A couple of people have asked me how well I like the service we've been getting since we switched to Dish Network. Honestly I'm very happy, but I do have a few complaints.

There's a $5 hidden charge for anyone who doesn't hook their HD DVR up to a phone line. The phone line is used to download messages, and buy PPV. I spent half an hour on the phone explaining to the supervisor at the call center that we don't have a land-line, we don't want PPV, and we don't care about their messages, but that if they wanted to pay for us to have a land line then I would be happy to connect it.

Not only that, but nobody explained that there was a charge – and both a sales agent and an install tech had the opportunity. In fact, I even asked the tech if there was any problem with not having a phone line connected, and he assured me there wasn't. After explaining all of this to the call center supervisor, she gave me 10 months without the $5 charge to compensate for not being informed of the charge, but it will be charged after that. How convenient for them that we agreed to an 18 month contract.

Even after they add the $5 charge back in, our service will still be cheaper than the Comcast equivalent; so while I'm not thrilled about it, I'm OK with it.

My other complaint is that I can't watch standard definition ("not HD") shows in a wide-screen format. I think the receiver is up-converting standard-def channels and in the process adding black bars to the sides to make it the right aspect ratio. With Comcast, I had the option to have standard definition shows stretch to fit the screen, and HD channels would be fine without having to change anything. I suppose I would be ok changing the stretch setting manually on my TV, if that worked, but for whatever reason, those settings are disabled. So I'm stuck with black bars on the sides.

If you know how to fix this, please please PLEASE tell me.