Keeping up with the Joneses

Memorial Day weekend, we moved the good TV (42" Samsung DLP HDTV) into the living room, and about a week later I went into Time Warner's office to upgrade to the HD cable box. "Would you like to try the DVR while you're at it? Only $4.95 a month for the first 3 months."

I hadn't really planned on getting the DVR, but the VCR situation was getting old and busted - the units work, but recording 2 hours/day, 5 days/week takes a toll on tapes. They just don't like to be reused that much. If my wife cared a lot about picture quality for her soap operas, we'd be spending at least $5/month on tapes alone.

Plus, there's a lot of stuff I'd like to watch, but can't because it's on too late. Or we're not home. Or I just plain forget to watch it entirely. So...yeah, I got the DVR.

It's pretty nice, I have to admit. We aren't even close to filling it yet, but at some point we might. The whole "set it and forget it" thing is nice - just tell it to record every airing of a particular program, and you're done, even if it changes timeslots.

Someday, maybe a large-scale MythTV setup. But before I can do that, I need to wire the whole house with 100base-T or GigE. And buy a few low-power, silent, high-storage Linux boxes.