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One of my least favorite things to do in the world — only slightly more tolerable than being strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Vogon poetry — is waiting around all day for service/tech/sales/uniformed people to come and service something/install something/sell something/shoot something.

They like to give you these “windows” of time, like “sometime around the Fifth of September, give or take a week”, and it’s pretty much impossible to get any work done while you’re sitting around waiting them to make their “window”, even if you work out of the house.

I have a sneaking suspicion that these service people actually get a perverse pleasure out of knowing that their crappy little fifteen minute repair job is going to devour six or seven hours of your life … and that’s assuming they don’t get lost and have to call you fifteen times on their cell phone because they can’t figure out the difference between Apple Avenue in Palos Verdes and Orange Avenue in Pasadena.

At this very moment I am sitting in my chair waiting for some satellite installer to come and upgrade my dish and give me a nice, spanking new HD DVR for my DirecTV and HD rig.

This makes me nervous.

This makes me nervous because it is the first time since subscribing to DirecTV eight years ago that someone other than myself has installed my satellite system. I’m what you call a Type-Tech-A personality, which means that I always, always, always build my own computer systems, repair my own computer systems, install my own satellite dishes, realign my own satellite dishes, etc.

Since some stranger is scheduled to come and fiddle with my own fucking equipment, I have some personal growth to take care of. I have to learn to let go. To trust. To delegate. All those mature types of things. I’m an adult. I can do it. I can grow.

And if the guy does anything even remotely stupid (which is likely) I will calmly retrieve my mature kitchen knife, maturely stab him in his stupid little eye, and maturely kick his ass off my property so I can install my own dish. Five LNBs and all.

You know, I’m getting really tired of greedy companies trying to squeeze more money out of fans of classic films and television by constantly reissuing them in ever more ridiculous “super-duper remastered rejiggered repulsive regurgitated” editions.

But what really ticks me is off is when the studio and/or filmmakers go back and try to “update” them with new effects, or new editing, or whatever.

Worst case scenario: Paramount is issuing Star Trek: the original series Season 1 on HD-DVD this November, for a whopping US$220. But what really offends me is that they’ve decided to re-do ALL the visual effects with modern CGI.

Why the holy fuck would anyone want to take a classic 60s show which was produced with sweat and tears with the best technology of its time and throw it all out of joint by pasting modern crap over it? Not only is that extremely disrespectful to the artists who worked on it at the time, but it is going to look ridiculous against the 60s hair styles, sets, and rubber gorillas that Captain Kirk fought.

What’s next, airbrushing out the beehive haircuts and putting digital trousers on all the women?

Leave well enough alone, and find some taste and restraint, guys. Weren’t the Star Wars “Special” Editions bad enough?

Lots and lots of you out there use TiVos and you think they rock. RIght on. If that’s your speed that’s great.

But my own approach is somewhat different and, for me, much more rewarding.

Before I get to that approach, though, I think I’ve mentioned on this lame little blog that I have this completely awesome recording exchange thing with a good friend of mine in Oxford (that is, that town with the university located midway between London and Cardiff), Danny. We’ve been perfecting it since 1999, the grim dark times of … [shiver] … tape.

(I won’t go into the cost and inconvenience involved in mailing packages of VHS cassettes back and forth across the Atlantic, but suffice to say we didn’t request as much programming of each other then.)

Then came the light. The light of recordable DVDs. We began to request more shows from each other. Digital frisbees were hurled from Los Angeles to Oxford with happy abandon. Good times were had by all. Postal costs were reduced practically to nonexistence.

Which leads me to my version of TiVo: HDD/DVD recorders. I have a Panasonic DMR-E85 with a hard disk that can record up to 54 hours of content (at SP mode). That content can reside on the hard drive as long as I wish it to, during which I can edit it, give it a name, choose a thumbnail still, and other rudimentary editing tasks. Then, when the fancy or whim strikes me, I can blow it over to a DVD-R, which can burn up an entire 2 hours worth of SP content to an 8x disc in a bit over ten minutes. Or I can choose to add shows to discs one at a time; I needn’t do it all at once. Then when the disc is full, I finalize it (which takes just under two minutes), and it flowers into a fully-compliant video DVD which will play in every DVD player I’ve tried.

You see, it’s that last ability where my system leaves TiVo behind, and why I don’t understand TiVo’s popularity over HDD/DVD Recorders: portability. With TiVo, you can watch to your heart’s content — but only on the television to which the TiVo is attached. You cannot archive the programming, send it to others, free up the hard drive, share the love.

Or send it to your friend across the Atlantic.

And thanks to the modern miracle that is HDTV, my friend has the pleasure of receiving widescreen programming recorded off downconverted HDTV with picture quality far greater than would be had from standard definition signals (the greatly reduced digital artifacts alone make a huge difference).

While the UK is only just now about to launch into HDTV themselves, they’ve had 16×9 widescreen for about five years now, which means that 98% of the content I receive from Danny is anamorphic widescreen, making the experience much more cinematic and dramatic than conventional 4×3 pictures.

This is going to sound corny, but what is so rewarding about my exchange with Danny is that I know the stuff I send him is going to blow him away, and he’s getting to see these things months in advance of his peers. A couple weekends ago, for example, he finally blew out his hoarded backlog of Season 2 Lost episodes in one twelve-hour geekout, bringing him up to about the early April broadcasts. Conversely, Season 2 of Lost only just recently debuted on Channel 4 (in other words, episodes broadcast in the States way back in October last), meaning that Danny can strut about, smugly proclaiming that he’s long since seen episodes others will have to wait weeks or even months to see. That rocks.

Okay. You can bittorrent them, or get them off the usenet. But there is nothing like the sheer pleasure of receiving this enticing parcel in the mail, with a mysterious customs label affixed to it, and then ripping it open to discover a heap of recorded joy within. Believe me. And the whole meaning of our exchange is that I do all the work to put together his shows, and he does all the work to put together mine, and it’s complete reciprocation.

Anyway, in a very roundabout way, my point is this: if any of you don’t yet have a TiVo and are considering buying one, do at least consider the possibility of an HDD/DVD Recorder instead, such as my Panasonic. I’ve never regretted not being part of the TiVo crowd, because I think my HDD/DVD Recorder takes it one step better.

Time to go burn some discs for my friend.

Technorati Tags: DVD, TV, DVD Recorders

My dear friend Danny — my longtime partner in International TV Exchange crime — recently forked out for a complete overhaul of his home theater, the centerpiece of which is now a spanking new 50-inch plasma hi-def set.

The thing is, since Danny lives in Oxford (you know, that Inspector Morse place), he’s got nothing to watch in actual HD until late May, when Sky Digital are scheduled to drop round and install the new HD receiver. I think actual bona fide HD broadcasting is due the following day. He’s practically running up the walls, waiting to really put his new plasma baby to the test, and I can’t blame him his impatience.

I remember when I first got my HD set way back in 2001. I’d had an HD DirecTV receiver for ever (since 1998), but was downconverting to a standard definition 16×9 set. But, thanks to a location here in Los Angeles too close to the hills, I actually had no local reception of HD channels (excepting NBC), seriously limiting my selection, when I did finally put myself in debt for my 34-inch direct display. Now, of course, DirecTV offers four of the locals and a growing number of other HD channels, so thankfully my days in the wilderness are behind me.

But regardless of my early limited choices, HDTV has become such an integral part of the viewing process that I can’t imagine living without it. It’s kind of like going back to Bud Light after trying English pub ale. And, of course, how could we endure watching DVDs off anything but a progressive-scan, anamorphic display? Perish the thought.

And now it would seem that our friends in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have now, also, seen the light. It looks like tons of UEFA football matches are going to switch to HD basically immediately, and unlilke the feeble, disinterested, sloth-like growth of programming that occurred in the US, it would seem that UK HD availability is going to debut with a bang and not a whimper. I’m chuffed to bits for my friend, and also a little wistful, because once HD enters your life, you can never go back again.

Danny has put some photos chronicling his epic undertaking here. They’re quite fun.