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I decided that it was time to join everyone else and get a DVR. I tried to avoid it, but now I’m giving in. The main reason is that 3 shows that I like air simultaneously on Sunday nights and 2 shows air simultaneously on Monday nights. Also, there are channels that I haven’t watched much and I think it would be cool to just record a few hours of programming here and there just to get a sample. And finally, I like the idea of watching TV on my schedule and not being stuck to the network schedule.

I still have a VCR, but the shows that I recorded looked and sounded terrible. I’ve tried recording on my computer using my video capture card and so far that’s been a big pain. The problem is normally with the audio. I always hear the TV through my speakers, but sometime the sounds coming through the microphone is what gets recorded. I’ve messed around with the software settings and I can’t get it to work 100% of the time. When things don’t work correctly I usually have to pay $1.99 to buy the episodes on iTunes.

When the capture process does work, I normally try burning the episodes I record to DVD so I can watch them on my TV (I throw the DVDs away when I’m finished), but the video quality is always terrible. Any suggestions on DVD encoding software?

Thankfully, DirecTV offers a receiver with a built-in DVR. From what I’ve read it doesn’t have all the features of TiVo, but all I really need to be able to do is record and watch the shows. It does allow me to record 2 shows at once while watching a 3rd. This is great for my Sunday night problem and my Monday night problem as well. DirecTV’s website says that all I have to do is pay a $5.99 monthly fee.

When I went online and started the process of upgrading one receiver to a DVR receiver, somewhere during the process I got a message saying that I would have to pay $50. I called their customer service number to ask what this fee was all about. The guy told me that he couldn’t see any reason why I would have to pay $50, but instead I would have to pay $99 for the box and $19 handling. I said no to this. I knew that if I had signed up for the DVR when I first got DirecTV, it would have been free except for the monthly fee. I searched online and confirmed this. After thinking about this some, I sent an angry email to them. I got my hopes up about finally having DVR and I get hit with these charges that I wasn’t warned about before. I got a response to my email saying that someone would call me within the next few days to discuss what they could do to make me happy.

They called while Heroes was on, so I called back later that night. I don’t get noticeably angry with people very often, but I was pissed by the time I got off the phone and they could tell. The pin number they gave me to use when I called back didn’t work. I had to go through their automated system. I got transferred to the wrong department 3 times before getting to the correct one, and I had to explain my situation each time. I was in Wal-Mart right before the last transfer. The reception was so bad that I could hardly hear what was being said. I had to stand in one spot in Wal-Mart just to get a clear reception. I had to play their little game, where the price went from $118 down to $50 and then finally down to $19 to cover the shipping and handling. He had told me that he couldn’t give me a better deal and kept doing “research” as I argued to find better deals. I knew from the beginning that if he wanted to give it to me for free he could have. He once told me that I might be able to get a special offer after I had been a customer for a year I might be able to get a special offer. I unkindly told him that solution wasn’t going to do me a lot of good now. After speaking with him for a long time, I got annoyed and asked him about cancelling my satellite service. I was never serious about that. That’s when he did some “research” and made the offer of $19. I just settled for that because I didn’t want to be on the phone anymore and I didn’t think I would get a better offer. When we were finalizing everything, the call got dropped and I had to go through their automated system again and explain to another person what was going on. It was almost midnight at this point and I was driving home and just wanted to go to bed. Thankfully, everything went pretty smoothly after this point. I’m glad that I saved $99, but it took a lot of aggravation to do it.

The DirecTV guy should be coming tomorrow to install everything. The timing is great. Lately when I’ve heard about shows that I wanted to watch, I’ve written it down in my notepad. This weekend there are 6 shows I want to watch, some of them overlapping. I’m hoping that everything goes well.