TV My Way

TV used to be so simple. A box. Some channels. If you were lucky, you had a remote so you could change between your 5 channels from the couch.

Now there is not just TV but cable and internet and satellites and all sorts of crazy technological things. I love all the new stuff we have access to, but the sheer variety of access points available and the machinery that accompanies them exhausts me.

I am not afraid of gadgets. My dad is a gadget guy. We had a computer when I was in 5th grade. We had a CD player in 1988!! (Which, bizarrely, still works and is in regular use at my parents’ house. The thing outlasted a multitude of DVD players.)

I married one of these gadget guys, too. We have a completely non-traditional TV setup. We use hard drives, internet, pretty much anything and everything. There is a plethora of small boxes with little lights. There are a surprising number of remotes (especially surprising considering how easily we lose them).

Right now we rely mostly on a computer and our Roku, where we stream Netflix and such. This may change. We’ve gone through several servers, computers, AppleTV’s and other gadgets since we got our own place.  Every few months or so it is overhauled and upgraded and reworked until it again meets Eric’s satisfaction.

If you know it, it’s not so hard to use. The problem comes when someone else has to use it. Once I wrote up a guide for babysitters that was 2 pages long, single spaced. (And came with a demonstration.)

Sometimes I’d like to be rid of the wires and the new little boxes that replace the old little boxes and the network errors and all the craziness. But TV itself is so complicated now that I fear even my simplest request is bizarrely complicated.

Cable is okay but I’ve had way too many bad experiences with cable providers who shall not be named or linked because I despite them so much, so I’d probably lean towards satellite television instead.

Back in my single days I had Dish Network in my little apartment, complete with my own personal DVR with nothing weird on it that I didn’t want to watch and no one to delete my stuff when the capacity got too full.  *sigh* Those were some pleasant days.

But if we make the plunge I have a serious list of demands.

Demand #1: Only the Channels I Want.

None of this Golf Channel crap for me. I don’t like wading through a guide that is stuffed with shows I will NEVER watch. But if you let me pick my channels I’d be all about that. I know what I watch, I know what I like, so please don’t pick my channels for me.

Demand #2: His and Hers DVR’s

Straightforward, right? He has his stuff that I don’t watch. I have my stuff that he doesn’t watch. We do get together for a decent number of shows, but I do NOT want anyone messing with my scheduled recording of The Good Wife, thank you very much.

Also I need plenty of space for all those movies I will record and take a few months to get around to watching “when I feel like it.”

Demand #3: One Stop Shop

I like TV. I like On-Demand. I like Netflix. WHY CAN WE NOT HAVE ALL OF THEM TOGETHER?

If there was some crazy merger to create some new strange hybrid of streaming goodness, I would be so there. So would everyone else. It would be the One Ring to Rule Them All of Television.

Demand #4: One Remote. Period.

Okay, maybe 2. But not more than that. And don’t give me one of these crazy remotes with a bajillion more buttons than I actually need.

Demand #5: A Swank TV-Viewing Room

That’s not unreasonable, right? I’m thinking the movie-theater style chairs. Popcorn machine. Light dimmer. You guys can totally do that.

Do you have a gadget obsessive in your house? Is your TV setup too elaborate to explain? What’s your current setup and what do you like/dislike about it?

This post was sponsored by Dish Network. But the content is, as always, all mine.

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