Observations Along The Road... at Dreamwidth

We tend to look back on the past through rose colored glasses. We think travelling by plane in the 1950s and 1960s was so much more elegant and refined than today’s cattle cars, but it really wasn’t. Similarly, we look back on the “Golden Age” of Television — live TV from the 1950s and 1960s — as something special, but it really wasn’t. Sets weren’t fancy, performances were hit or miss, and there were numerous imperfections (anyone who has watched rebroadcasts of the live Peter Pan will remember it). But through the rose-colored glasses of time it seems better, and so NBC tried to capture that magic last night with a live production of “The Sound of Music“, starring Carrie Underwood, Stephen Moyer, Audra McDonald, Christian Borle, and Laura Benanti. Although I only meant to watch 20 minutes, I ended up watching the whole thing. In short, I thought it was a reasonable effort — it was imperfect, but it wasn’t unwatchable. Here are some short comments regarding the production — certainly not a full review as I don’t have the time (further, I don’t think you need the full review treatment).

First and foremost, this was a remake of the stage production, so all you Julie Andrews-loving, Carrie Underwood-hating people out there… shut up. It is wrong to compare this to the movie, which used a rejiggered script with songs in different places, and had the money and time to get perfect scenery and to retake and retake until it was just right. This production, although rehearsed, was a single live take that could not be redone. Comparing it to a full movie is apples and oranges. Compare it to other stage productions or equivalent live stage musicals on TV. [I'll note that most of the "hating" reviews I'm seeing are upset that this wasn't their benighted movie, believing that the movie is the musical. The stage production existed for years before the movie.]

That said, the production had a very 1950-ish feel to it. Although this was a remake of the stage production, it didn’t feel like a stage production — it felt like an odd hybrid with much more elaborate sets that were obviously on sound stages, but that lacked the framing limitations of the proscenium arch. Stage productions often use simple sets that permit you to use your imagination. Here, the realism of the sets made you wish for the movie and its larger scenery, but the limitations of the sound stage and the live nature of the performance (which limited camera angles and cutting) amplified the artificial nature. This was common for 1950s and early 1960s TV, but is completely uncommon to today’s audience.

The larger problem with this production was the casting and direction. Each of the lead’s casting was wrong in various ways…

Audra McDonald had the perfect voice for the Mother Superior, and she played the role with class and style. Of course, historically, the casting was incorrect and thus felt off, but her performance more than made up for it.

Carrie Underwood wasn’t the train wreck many made her out to be. Her singing was strong, and I had no problem with her voice or accent. I certainly (and perhaps this is heresy) preferred her to the lilt Mary Martin always had. People forget that Julie Andrews did Maria with an English accent (as did Sally Ann Howes), Mary Martin had some Texas twang in her voice, and other brought vaguely American accents. There’s no correct accent for Maria (unless someone does Austrian). However, she wasn’t the best Maria that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a few — most recently Shannon Warne in the 2011 Cabrillo Music Theatre production (who was excellent), but also the earlier Cabrillo production with Christina Saffran Ashford, the 1978 Los Angeles Civic Light Opera (LACLO) production with Sally Ann Howes, and the 1972 LACLO production with Florence Henderson), but she certainly wasn’t bad in the role. She had a youthful enthusiasm that was fun to see, and I’m sure she would have improved in the role if she was performing it 8-shows a day for a few months. But this was her first major acting performance after just a little rehearsal, and so there were a more than a few wooden moments. But she remembered all of her lines, and never expressed contrary emotions. How much the wooden-ness was due to the director, as opposed to the actress or a lack of chemistry with her other main lead, I’m unsure. Certainly the director could have helped her more during rehearsals. But still, not that bad. My major complaint was more that she was the same size as some of the children, which was jarring.

As an aside: Could the director have chosen someone better for the role? Most assuredly. Would that choice have been the same draw, and pulled in the same audience to see if she could pull it off? Quite likely not. From the point of view of the network, which was more important: Having quality actors that those “in the know” would tune in to watch, or having actors with a greater risk of failure and thus getting a larger audience to see them fail? Do I really need to answer that question? This is television, where ratings trump quality every day. If you want quality entertainment, television is not your first choice. It exists, yes, but it rare and doesn’t get the ratings, and is more likely found on specialty channels than legacy broadcast networks. This production did exactly what the network wanted: it drew ratings, and probably sufficient ratings for them to attempt a stunt like this again. Given the dearth of theatrical musicals and variety on the major networks, this is not a bad thing. At least NBC is demonstrating itself as a network that at least thinks about theatre.

Stephen Moyer was more of a problem. The Captain required more seasoning given the character’s history, and Moyer did not convey that seasoning, nor did he have the strength of voice of a Theodore Bikel or others I have seen in the role, such as Edward Mulhare. Another problem was that he had little chemistry with Underwood’s Maria. Underwood-haters are quick to blame this on Carrie Underwood and her acting. However, I’m more inclined to blame in on Moyer — Underwood had spunk and was appealing, if not perhaps too upbeat. Moyer just didn’t seem to click with her.

Christian Borle, although a great actor, was just off (to me) as Max. He played it much more comically, and came off much more gay than I’ve seen in other portrayals (especially when compared to someone like Werner Klemperer). He seemed unrealistic. This, I believe was a directoral problem, as his singing was great. I’ll note that most reviews I’ve read praised Borle in the role. He performed well, but had notes in his performance that seemed untrue to that character at that time. As an aside, I saw a recent article on Kveller about things you never think about during this musical, and one was Max. He was obviously both gay and Jewish, and just let a war hero escape the country. He didn’t have a happy future in the 3rd Reich.

Laura Benanti was perhaps the best casting in a role that always comes off as wooden and stiff. She did attempt to bring life to the role and interacted well with the rest of the cast. She had more chemistry with Moyer, and perhaps might have been better as Maria (after all, IIRC, she has done Cinderella on Broadway… and has done Maria in one of her first Broadway shows). But she wouldn’t have drawn the eyeballs — outside of the theatre community, few have heard of her. Remember: Her presence didn’t save the one series she was in.

Most of the children worked reasonably well — I still remember the lovely interplay of Maria and Leisl in the final reprise of “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” — but poor little Gretl was just miscast. She was cute, but she really couldn’t sing.

One last problem: Live performances… and even more so live stage performers… feed off the response of the audience and their reactions. The audience and the performers are a symbiotic whole, and this is what makes live theatre unique. This performance moved from soundstage to soundstage with no audience. This contributed to the stiffness of the production. It is also one reason why movies are different beasts, and 100% faithful adaptations rarely work: the stage production is paced for the stage, with scenes and timings designed for audience reaction and scene changes. Without the live stage and those constraints, the artifice becomes visible and hinders the production. If you want to film a stage production, treat it as a stage production and film a real live performance (even if you invite an audience).

In any case, those are my quick thoughts on the production. I went in planning to only watch 20 minutes, and then catch up on Big Bang Theory, but I ended up watching the entire production. It wasn’t unwatchable, but it wasn’t perfect. In short, it was a great example of what the “Golden Age of Television” was really like, and if NBC tried this again with a different musical, I’d likely watch.

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This morning, Buzzfeed had a list of 17 Reality Shows that Need To Come Back. Now, most of these were forgettable tripe, but there was one, oh one, that really needs to come back: “Trading Spaces“, with the wonderful Mindy Paige Davis Page (a/k/a Paige Davis).

For those of you not old enough to remember, Trading Spaces was a home-improvement show that had two neighbors trade spaces in their house. TLC brought in a decorator and a carpenter, and they had $1000 per room to redo the room. Simple concept, and it would work well in today’s economic times with constrained budgets. Trading Spaces had a mix of designers each with their specific quirks and styles, and would mix them up on the different shows. It spun off a number of variants (including a children’s version), most notably WYWO (While You Were Out).

A number of things killed Trading Spaces , but they all devolve into “tinkering with the format”. They over-emphasized two of the designers — Doug and Hildi — and their outrageous designs. They kept playing with “surprise” rooms and larger budgets. They had contests to find new designers. They even eliminated Paige for a year! These all hurt the show and its viewership.

Still, I believe that a back-to-basics Trading Spaces would succeed these days, especially on a network such as DIY or HGTV. I’d love to see it… and I’d especially love to see it with Paige!

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This weekend brought the end of one of the few television shows I’ve enjoyed over the past two seasons: “Smash” on NBC. The end wasn’t surprising; the ratings were in the cellar for much of the second season. Still, I’ll miss the show… and so I thought I would share with you (over lunch) what I think went right… and where it all went wrong. Of course, there is the obligatory triple of news chum related to Smash as well.

Smash, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a musical TV drama that purported to tell the story of the mounting of a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe, eventually called Bombshell. It started with the idea for the musical; it ended at the Tony awards. When Smash started, I had high hopes for it. It was, after all, on NBC — the network that had given us Fame in the 1980s (the Glee of its era, only with original music, not cover tunes). Smash started off well — we saw the drama of writing the show, the difficult life of actors, the audition and rehearsal process. The problem was that Smash rapidly devolved into a soap opera, focusing more on the love lives and drama of the characters than that drama of the show development process. There’s loads of drama there — much of which was glossed over — such as the set, technical, sound, light, costume designs. As the second season came on, the new show runner tossed some of the problematic subplots that were overly melodramatic… only to replace them with equally melodramatic subplots.

Looking back, what suggestions would I have made if I had been in charge? Here are a few:

• View Smash as a Miniseries. Open-ended dramas work well only if each episode is self-contained (e.g., CSI:), or if one is dealing with a true soap opera (e.g., Dallas). If Smash had been defined as a fixed number of episodes for its particular story, it could have been well plotted out — in advance — and appropriate time allocated to build to the various elements. By the way, this was the same problem Heroes had — it needed to have a fixed number of episodes. Trying to stretch out the story with the same characters in multiple books started to make it implausible.
• Focus on the Broadway. The show development was unrealistic. I have no problem with compressing the schedule, but focusing more on the drama of the process would have been good. Songs going in. Songs going out. Songs being added at the last minute, or to support/not support a particular character. Set issues, lighting issues, sound issues, costume issue. Issues with Broadway unions. Issues with the entire development process, from multiple workshops to non-profit tryouts. These were all glossed over and resolved far too quickly… and far too much time was spent with a focus on the personal lives.
• Understand the Role of the Music. Music in a show needs a context. Within the musical itself, musical numbers don’t exist to just get out a song — they must move the plot forward or illustrate something internal. This is why some of the fantasy numbers of the first season didn’t work. The music that did work was the numbers from the shows under development (and this is why adding the second musical in the second season worked). What was missing was musical numbers about the drama of the show development itself. These numbers (and they do exist — just look at Kiss Me Kate or Me and Juliet) could have provided the needed avenues for the actors to explore their hidden turmoils, or the technical creatives to explore the struggles they deal with.
• Don’t Make Things Too Convenient. Although I know this is TV, things worked out far too easy for Smash, and its internal musicals Bombshell and Hit List. It is unlikely they would have swept the Tonys as they did, or have had such an easy process to get to Broadway. I’ve seen shows languish for years (look at Spiderman or some of the development projects from the Pasadena Playhouse.

There are a number of things about Smash that I did like — starting with the casting. I’ve enjoyed Katherine McPhee since we saw her in Annie Get Your Gun at Cabrillo Music Theatre (what’s this American Idol of which you speak — I know of no such show). As for Megan Hilty, we saw her when she was in 9 to 5 at the Ahmanson. All the other leads were great, and the cameos by other Broadway folk were fun. I enjoyed both shows under development (Bombshell and Hit List), and actually hope that both are further developed into real pieces — it would have been great to have had Smash-specials where they actually presented the full productions. One can dream. The songwriters chosen were good (Todd and Mark are always one, and Joe Iconis is a new songwriter waiting to hit it big).

I promised you some news chum related to Smash, so here are the articles that caught my eye… and actually prompted this post:

• The Death of Kyle. This Buzzfeed article discusses why Kyle, the upcoming book writer for the Hit List musical, had to die. Part of it was an homage to Jonathan Larsen and Rent. However, more of it was a parallel to Carousel and how the death would spur changes in other characters.
• The Story Behind the Music. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman were the two primary authors behind the Bombshell musical. Marc has written a long article looking at all the music he wrote in Smash, and the context behind each and every song (much of which was not shown in the show).  Had this context been explained, the songs would make much more sense. I will say that it makes me want to get the CDs of the show even more (and I hope all songs are one them).
• The Third Season. After filming on the second season had wrapped, Smash learned it wasn’t renewed… however they knew the writing was on the wall as they were filming the final episodes… and so they crafted them to be able to serve as a series finale. In this article, the Executive Producer talks about the end of the 2nd season… and what had been planned for the 3rd season. It is interesting to watch the finale with this in mind — you can see how they were setting things up for the next season.

ETA (for my reference):

Songs by the Smash Cast (Amazon)

Smash Music (NBC)

Smash Original Songs (Wikia)

Smash – Complete Season Two (Wikia)

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Staring at the collected links today while eating my salad over lunch identified two distinct themes. The first brings together a number of entertainment items of interest:

• Money for Music. Some interesting numbers out of SXSW 2013 provide a picture of entertainment spending: Serious music fans spend over $442/year on music. Specifically, Neilsen has identified three core consumer categories. The “aficionado” is willing to spend more than $422 per year on music, concerts and artist merch, and does so via sites such as iTunes, Amazon and indie outlets. The “digital fan” was determined to spend about $363 per year and views a smartphone or tablet as the entertainment hub. Finally, the “big box” fan shops at mass retailers, is partial to pop and country and spends, on average, $196 per year on music. Those who can be classified as music fans account for nearly 75% of all music spending in the U.S. The bad news? The most avid of fans in Nielsen’s sampling of 4,000 consumers downloaded the most tracks for free, approximately 30 in a year. What’s more, those classified as “music fans” account for just 40% of the music-buying public in America. Based on these numbers, I’m in the aficionado group — about 3-4 times per year, I’ll do a $100+ music buy — usually a mix of used CDs, new CDs, LPs, and digital music. I go to lots of concerts and musicals during the year, but don’t buy that much merch. I also listen to my music — I’ll note my Music playlist on the iPod is at 30,888 tracks, and nearly two-thirds of those tracks have been listened to at least 8 times.
• Blood on the Stage. This is some exciting news. Playbill has announced that the Transfer Theatre Company will be mounting a production of the musical “Carrie” this fall. Transfer Theatre Company is what used to be known as the Neighborhood Theatre of Palos Verdes. In that guise, we saw truly excellent productions of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Parade” (the latter even better than what the Mark Taper Forum did). So I’m really excited about TTC’s production of Carrie. The original production was a notorious flop; the revival redeemed the musical’s reputation, and I can’t wait to see what TTC will do with it.
• Veronica Mars Lives. Now I’m not into TV that much, except for a few guilty pleasures (cough, Dallas, cough, Survivor, cough, Smash). But I have been having fun with Kickstarter lately, so an article in EW about the brief UPN/CW series “Veronica Mars” being revived for a movie was interesting. Why? Because the only way it will happen is if a $2 million, 30-day Kickstarter succeeds. I’ve seen Kickstarter used for lots of things — cast albums, theatre productions, and some specialized movie projects, but this is the first time I’ve seen it for a major-market product with a major studio. It is also a gigantic amount they need to raise. It will be interesting to see if they can do it. [Note: In less than a day, they've raised over $800,000; if this pace continues, reaching $2,000,000 is clearly possible.] [ETA: In less than 8 hours, they are up to 1.84 million. I expect them to reach their goal in under 24 hours. Amazing!] [ETAA: They made it, in less than a day. Expect to see funding efforts for movies like this again.]

Music: The Wedding Singer (Original Broadway Cast): “If I Told You”

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Today’s lunchtime news chum brings together a collection of stories all about the entertainment industry:

• A Period Problem. A recent LA Times article explored a growing problem in period movies: Period actors who don’t look period. The problem is that audiences these days expect their movies to correctly reflect the period, even in high definition. Everything must be exact. Now combine this with actors who actually have good diets, visit the dentist, have tattoos and piercings, and you have a problem. Somethings you can cover with makeup. Others you can. The article gives the example of Daniel Day Lewis’s pierced ear, and Brad Pitt’s pecs, but I’m sure there are others.
• A Smashing Problem. Tonight, Smash returns to the schedule. Many people thought the first season turned into a train wreck. I actually enjoyed the first season, but do agree that some of the subplots were simply silly and some of the musical numbers made absolutely no sense (such as the Bollywood number, which I enjoyed anyway. BuzzFeed has a very nice article exploring the first season of Smash, and presenting their opinion as to why the first season became a train wreck. From everything I’ve read, the new showrunner is doing a good job bringing the show back to where it should be.
• A Ticketmaster Problem. When I went to purchase tickets for Elton John, Caesars was using a ticketing service I had never heard of: AXS. They still added outrageous service charges, so I put them in the same book with Ticketmaster (I use them only when I must). The LA Times had an interesting article on who is behind AXS: Evidently, AXS is AEG’s competitor to Ticketmaster. AEG is moving to use AXS at all of its Los Angeles venues — including the Staples Center (and for all Staples sports tenants). The transition from Ticketmaster will slowly be moved out. Only two venues I frequent use Ticketmaster (Pantages and Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza). I avoid fees at the first by going to the box office in person; I avoid fees at the second by being a season subscriber.

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Today, my city and my state lost one of its greatest boosters, and his passing reminds me of other great journalistic boosters for my city and state. In their memory this post is dedicated.

Today’s news brings the sad report of the death of California icon Huell Howser. Howser, a transplant from Tennessee, grew to be one of the greatest booster of Los Angeles, Southern California, and all the quirks and oddities of California. Starting in the mid-1980s with Videolog, he rapidly developed a folksy style over a series of travelogue programs covering our great state. I know he was out to Orange Empire Railway Museum numerous times (which increased attendance every time), and even did a video report on the subway tunnels of the Pacific Electric. He was evidently as nice in person as he was on TV, and just enjoyed telling people about this wonderful state. I’m glad to see KCET will continue to air his shows.

Thinking of Huell made me remember another lost icon of Los Angeles, Ralph Story. Story died in 2006, and I wrote up some recollections then.  Story worked for KCBS (then KNXT) and KABC. I remember Story from his award winning series “Ralph Story’s LA”, which explored the history of Los Angeles. I particularly remember the segment he did on the Pacific Electric Railway tunnels near Echo Park.

I tend to like to do things in 3s, so I wanted a third person who boosted LA and has passed away. My wife came up with the answer: Jack Smith of the Los Angeles Times. Smith was a columnist who did regular columns on Los Angeles and Southern California; many of these were collected into books such as “The Big Orange” (for you Bay Area folks, substitute Herb Caen). Smith died in 1996, and I’m not sure the Times has had a columnist like him since. About the closest is Steve Lopez.

While writing this remembrance up, one other booster came to mind, but it is neither dead or off-the-air… however, it hasn’t had the same impact. KABC’s program, Eye on L.A., is a long running travelogue series hosted by whomever KABC had on staff (I remember Chuck Henry hosting it, but there have been others). However, it hasn’t exclusively focused on Los Angeles, or even California.

So, Huell, we thank your for your love of Los Angeles and California, and for continuing in the tradition of Ralph Story and Jack Smith, bringing the stories of the people to the people. You will be missed.

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If you recall, a while back I wrote of problems we were having with DirecTV. The problems have continued: as of this morning, our DirecTV receiver was resetting at :28 and :58 of each hour, making it completely unusable. We’ve called DirecTV, and they are working on a technical fix… with no estimated time of application. As a SOP, they offered 3 months of Starz for 1c, and we can call for a credit once the problem is resolved. However, I’m looking at a daughter coming home who wants to watch TV, and going to a conference in a little over a week where I will be depending on the DVR to record stuff for me. Needless to say, I’m not happy. This problem isn’t just me. It’s made it to the Consumerist, there are now 26 pages of comments on the Tivo forum, and 11 pages of complaints at the DirecTV forum. However, DirecTV has not publicly said one word about this, other than a tweet that they are working on it. According to Weaknees, they are aware of it. Perhaps they don’t care and just want their customers to upgrade to new equipment–at least that is how they are acting.

[ETA @ 1:13p: DirecTV Says It Will Credit Accounts Of Customers With Rebooting Tivos] (h/t Carl K.)

[ETA @ 1:58p: Per the DirecTV forum: "The issue was due to some bad APG data and it's has  been corrected about an hour ago.  folks may have seen one more reboot a bit ago but we believe the issue is now corrected …  fingers crossed"]

[ETA @ 6:08p: Appears to be fixed. Called for service credit. Wow. A whopping $3.]

[ETA @ 1:08p the next day: Email from DirecTV: "This is an important message from DIRECTV about your TiVo receiver. We are aware that you may have experienced a software issue that was causing your TiVo to reboot frequently. We want to assure you that we worked diligently with TiVo and resolved the issue yesterday. Due to this inconvenience we will be applying a onetime $10 discount to your account; this will appear as a credit on an upcoming bill statement. Thanks again for being a loyal DIRECTV customer. We truly appreciate your business."]

So, what to do. Here are the options as I see it — comments on the various providers are welcome: [ETA: As the problem is fixed, I'm not switching... but the analysis is useful in case I ever think about it again.]

• DirecTV. What would it take us to stay with DirecTV? Easiest would be to fix the problem! Lacking that, I would insist on: (1) provision of the new HD Tivo that does not appear to be rebooting, for free, at the same monthly Tivo rates; (2) no HD charges until we actually upgrade to HD TVs; (3) we can keep the Samsung Tivo, disconnected from the satellites, until all the programs on it are watched. Those three items would be the minimum; compensation for lost service and the unnecessary Tivo repair would be a bonus. I would also be willing to accept a loan of an HD Tivo until the problem is fixed, on the proviso that there are no charges and they have a technician come out and install it–no shipping delays.
• Dish Network. What I primarily know about Dish network, other than that it is a competitor to DirecTV, is that they tend to have longer disputes with various channels over carriage (such as the long running dispute with AMC). In terms of packages, it looks like the America’s Top 250 package is closest to what we have now. They are offering some good deals, such as saving $30/month for 12 months, a free “Hopper” DVR, free premiums for 3 months, and free installation. The Hopper DVR is whole-home and looks to record 6 channels, but is not Tivo. The other TVs would appear to require a Joey receiver; I’m not sure if that suffices. Looking at base prices, after the discount, DISH is slightly more expensive for (250+Showtime), but by under $2.  I cannot find on the DISH website what other fees they would have: regional sports fees, monthly fees for the Hopper and Joeys, etc. Switching to DISH would also probably be the least infrastructure changes to the house — as we already have DirecTV, it would just be a new dish, possibly a new multiswitch, and some new wiring to the Hopper. It might also require them to install a network connection to the various rooms if they do not do wireless. I have emailed DISH to get specific pricing; their site made it easy to send the email.
• Time Warner Cable. We’re primarily familiar with Time Warner Cable from use of their Roadrunner internet service. As for Cable TV, my experience goes back to the days of Theta Cable in West Los Angeles, and more recently Adelphia cable when we lived in North Hills. Translation: Bad experiences. As with the DISH website, the TWC site makes it hard to find the pricing. We would need the Choice tier. To get any pricing, you have to go to the order page (sigh). It looks like digital TV would be $39.99/mo, the whole house DVR would be $30.49, the additional outlets (HD, but we don’t really need HD) would be $20, Shotime would be $9.99… and there would be $40 for installation. It looks like the digital TV tier would include the Choice tier. There appear to be no free installation officers or other “goodies”. Given that the prices are only for 12 months, after a year, I believe we would be paying much more than DirecTV. The whole-home DVR can only record two shows at a time; it stores  up to 75 hours of HD or over 200 hours of SD programming. In terms of infrastructure, we already have cable going to the house for the Internet; some rewiring within the house would be required. I have attempted to email TWC — their site does not make it easy to do so, and the only non-chat method is a “Leave Feedback” form. The presumption appears to be you always want live interactive chat, which is something I hate. Demerits to TWC for a poor website.
• AT&T U-Verse. Currently, our only AT&T service is home phone. We would need the U300 package, at $87/month (although we could live with U200 at $72/month). The package includes a whole-home DVR and one wireless HD-ready receiver. There would be a discount of $28/mo the first six months, and the activation fee would be waived. The package would include the movie package. It would be an addition $7 for the 2nd receiver, and they do support wireless receivers (making it easier to add TVs to rooms without wiring, a plus). Unclear what the installation fee is. Their DVR can record 4 shows at once; 233 hours SD, 67 hours HD. It is not Tivo. Again, I attempted to email them with pricing questions, but AT&T Uverse provides no email mechanisms to contact them — there is only live chat or going to their stores. Double Demerits to AT&T for a very very poor website.

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When we moved into our current house in 2005, we got a present from DirecTV: A Samsung SIR-4080R DVR. We use it a lot (and I should note that we do not have HD service nor HDTVs, nor are they in our near future). We’ve had a fan go bad and a tuner go bad, and each time Weaknees has helped up repair the DVR. Recently the DVR has started to act up again — this time is it randomly rebooting while watching TV. According to the Weaknees FAQ, this is often due to a hard drive starting to fail. Given that (a) we do not have HD nor plan for it in the near futures, and (b) all the current DVRs from DirecTV are HD-DVRs (well, they do have one standard, but it isn’t Tivo), and (c) the new HD DirecTivos cost even more than DirecTV DVrs, we’d like to stick with the current box. So….

Tomorrow my wife is going down to Weaknees in Culver City, and bringing our box in. We’ll have them do the flat fee service (which will diagnose whether another tuner is failing), and have them upgrade the hard disk so we can hold more programs. Hopefully, they will be able to move the old settings over as well. However, there is a risk we’ll lose the saved programs.

P.S. to Erin: We have burned a DVD of Steel Magnolias for you just in case. I also walked through the settings menus after the movie so we have a record of our settings.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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