I, like many others, enjoy my fair share of TV shows. I have my certain ones I watch on a regular basis and several others that I have the DVR set to record so I can watch at a later time (if I get around to it). Colleen and I both watch a couple hours of TV each night before we go to bed, usually the 8-10 block of programming. We also typically watch the 10 or 11 news while getting ready for bed or while in bed. So needles to say when the TV goes out (for power or some other reason) it can be pretty upsetting when you realize you are going to miss out on ‘your shows’ and may not be able to see them until they rerun (which you may miss since the DVR is most likely set to record the first showing of your favorite shows anyways). Well this is the boat I was in last night with my cable.

Yesterday when I went home and turned on the TV to pass some time while waiting for Colleen to get home, my cable TV was not working right, it kept freezing. After a few attempts on different channels with the same results I decided to power-down the cable box, let it sit for a few minutes and then power it back up. I don’t know about your cable box but this thing takes almost ten minutes to power back on from a cold start, so powering it down is not something I like to do.  Anyways after it came back online I tried some more channels and I got the same thing, 15 seconds of TV then a frozen screen.  I tried the other TVs and they were the same.  Luckily soon after that Colleen arrived home and we left for Andersons to get some more patio crap and meat for dinner. I was hoping while we were gone that the cable would somehow fix itself. Sadly after getting home and trying the TV again it was still the same. Since I had patio work to do I unplugged the cable box this time (which was not likely the problem as all TVs were showing the symptoms but I was kind of desperate) and went to work on the patio for a couple hours.

After the patio work was done for the day and we finished eating our steak dinners I called AT&T to see what was up with my cable.  There tech help is not too bad, I wasn’t on hold very long and the guy actually seemed knowledgeable. Another nice thing is that they don’t have you do very much, they just log into your router and take a look at the home network and the other cable boxes on the network, since my cable is all over IP. Unfortunately his fixes did not work and he said the earliest a home tech could come out would be Friday afternoon. I thanked him for his help, hung up and told Colleen the bad news. Immediately she is not happy that she will be missing Grey’s Anatomy, which is on the next night (Thursday). I think of all the shows I am going to miss and wasn’t too happy myself.  It really sucked we could get a 15 to 20 second spurt of what was on any channel but it would then freeze, so the TV was really teasing us.

After cleaning out fish tanks and doing a few other things around the house I just wanted to sit, relax and watch TV for an hour before I went to bed. It was 10 now and CSI: NY was on, I watch the show but nothing I feel like I need to watch or would be upset if I missed, but at this point I just wanted to watch something. So I turn to CBS and watch 15 seconds of the show and it freezes, just as I had expected at this point. I change to another station and watch 15 seconds and then freeze. This made me think though, what if I just change from channel 10 (CBS in SD) to channel 1010 (CBS in HD) every 15 seconds. So I turn back to channel 10 watch 15 seconds and then turn to 1010 and watch only about 8 seconds or so (I think it froze faster because of the HD), but it worked. I could watch the show as long as i kept changing back and forth, eventually I would just hit ‘last channel’ on the remote twice real quick to keep in on channel 10 so I could watch longer without it freezing.  I was able to watch a show, it was kind of annoying having to hit the ‘last channel’ button every 15 seconds or so, but it was working. 

This brings me to the title of this post. Is it sad that someone (mainly myself) will go through such extremes just to watch some TV show? I kind of feel it is and I knew that while I was doing it but didn’t care, I was able to watch my show. Is it also sad that I felt some sort of accomplishment for ‘figuring this out?’  Anyways I was just wondering what anyone else thought. And just as an update, about ten minutes before CSI was over the TV stopped freezing and it now seems to work just fine. I haven’t told AT&T yet since I want to make sure it will keep working before I have them cancel the home tech.