Premiere Week is here!

I think that I blog about television more than any other topic. Which might be a little sad, but I don’t care.

My relationship with television is a complicated one. I really love it, and take pretty seriously what I watch. If I watch a show, I have to see ALL the episodes. I was in to this before there were things like DVR or seasons on DVD. I recorded stuff on my vcr obsessively, I still have tapes upon tapes of all of the episodes of Friends, that I saved to rewatch. I was ahead of my time. (of course, now I’m behind, because even though I bought all 10 seasons of Friends on DVD when they came out, I still have boxes of VHS tapes that I can’t part with…)

So, of course, when you love tv as much as I do, you’re very excited for premiere week. As I always do, in late August/early September I search online for the most helpful calendar of when shows come back and in what time slots, I print it out, and I highlight the ones I want to watch, paying close attention to moved time slots and new conflicts. This year, like last year, I have only 1 recording conflict (3 shows in the same slot, the dvr can’t handle that), so I prioritize and plan to watch something online. Simple enough.

Last weekend I sat down with my calendar and I programmed my dvr to record the whole season of all my shows. I had to do this because on Aug. 30 comc*st wiped all the dvrs clean for some kind of reprogramming (to what I think is a much less user-friendly platform). I did these on in non-HD b/c I didn’t want to overwhelm my dvr with too much space, because at the end of last year when I upgraded to HD it seemed to go too fast.

Well, Monday night my first shows recorded. I had 1 hr of previous HD programming, and 2 ½ hrs of non-HD programming on the box, and when I checked it told me it was 40% full!! WTF?!?! At that rate my dvr would be full by Tuesday!! So, I looked up online and it tells me that the dvr should hold 60 hours of HD programming. Not 3. So, last night I got on the phone with comc*st and they reprogrammed my dvr to bring back its memory. Whatever. What that means is they wiped the thing clean. AGAIN. Now, the only thing I hadn’t watched on there was DWTS, which I can see online, but now I have to reprogram it all again!!!!! I set it last night for HD recording of only Tuesday shows, and they all recorded, only using 11%. Much better. So I guess tonight I’ll buckle down with my calendar once again.

All this to say – isn’t having cable and a dvr supposed to make life easier? Less complicated? Less aggravating??? Although I do appreciate that I no longer am trying to switch out and label like 5 tapes a week.

I realize that there are bigger issues in the world than my dvr… but vent I must. Can’t wait to catch up on all the premieres!!