Axxlog

This PVR is constantly warning you of something it’s gonna do that you might or might not give a shit about. And I just missed the absolute perfect beauty shot!

The machine gave me a football-style two-minute warning that it was about to record not one but two programs. (I’ll alert the media.) It did so as I was attempting to watch the bravura opening scenes of the Luhrmannist Romeo + Juliet.

And I didn’t get a photo of it! What is my problem?

I mentioned the overly-bright red LED indicating that the PVR is fulfilling its evolutionary obligation by recording your precious TV shows. In broad daylight, this LED beams out at me like a laser pointer. At night you can get a good tan from it.

Maybe I’m sensitive to devices beaming red lights at me since I distinctly recall watching 2001: A Space Odyssey when it came out. I was three years old, I sat on my mother’s knee, and I have a crystal-clear memory of the house lights coming up and the stage curtains closing on the final scene before intermission: HAL’s red eye staring with malevolent impassiveness.

A digital device that is not exactly solid-state but which has no visible moving parts does not need a recording indicator. It’s a skiamorph: A remnant of an outdated function.

And besides, as we will see later, this device violates Asimov’s first and second laws of robotics. It ignores me and sometimes even harms me. I get enough of that when I go out to the bar.

So I finally had the shiny new toy. And my first disappointment was the remote control.

Ancien régime

My digital cable box’s remote control (a Scientific Atlanta AT2000-4 for an Explorer 3200 box) is so good I talked it up in a presentation.

But the best part about the remote is eyes-free operation.

1. You always know what end is up because the top is rounded.
2. The arrow keys are 3D sculptural objects that surround the all-important Select key.
3. Volume and Channel don’t feel different from one another, but they’re in different places and are easy to learn. Mute is right above Volume.
4. The crucial control keys – Menu/Settings, Guide, Info – are the same shape, but have different orientations and are in unambiguous places.

Once you pick up the remote and put your thumb on the Select key, you know where every other important key is.

I’ve got a few complaints, of course.

1. I have one of the unusual and desirable models with four function keys on the top (Aux, VCR, TV, Cbl). They’re dead keys: You press the function key, then the keys over which they have scope. (To turn the TV power on, press TV, then Power. If you want to control the cable box, you then have to press the Cbl. I think it’s confusing for a lot of people, but I have decades of experience typing with dead keys and I find it a snap.)
2. I have some trouble with the number keys, since they’re too close to the other function keys, labeled A (yellow triangle), B (blue square), and C (red circle). In fact, if I’m lying down, I have to look at the remote to get the numbers right sometimes. Twice I’ve had to actually turn on a light! Much of the time, though, I just keep moving my thumb down until I get the right set of keys. Readily fixable, I think.

Accidentally accessible?

From an accessibility standpoint, the pros of this remote control outweigh the cons. If you have enough dexterity and strength to use the remote in the first place and you are visually-impaired, you can turn audio description on and off with nobody else’s help!

Since nearly all described shows use Second Audio Program to deliver the description track, you need to turn SAP on and off. And with this remote, you can, because the hardware of the remote is unambiguous and the software in the cable box is foolproof.

1. Press Menu/Settings (upper left beyond the arrow keys).
2. Press up-arrow.
3. Press Select.

You’re finished.

Want to turn it off? Do exactly the same thing.

Are you tuned to a digital station that doesn’t have SAP in the first place? Press the exact same keys and you harmlessly reselect English as your SAP language.

I quite doubt that Scientific Atlanta designed that feature in. It’s merely an accident. But a pleasant one.

Broke what didn’t need fixing

My PVR’s remote control, a model AT8400, gets nearly everything wrong that used to be right.

Let’s do a side-by-side comparison. I lined them up at the coloured function keys. New PVR remote control on the left.

1. Top and bottom ends are virtually indistinguishable by touch.
2. The top function keys (again four) light up, but are smaller and harder to press.
3. Menu is where Power used to be, Guide is where Menu used to be, and Info is where Guide used to be. That right there is a dealbreaker!
4. Settings gets its own key, but it’s where Mute used to be.
5. The little-used Page + and Page – keys now make more sense (they’re a single rocker rather than two buttons), but they’re in the position of the old Exit key, which now sits where the old Last key used to live. (That key switches between the current channel and the previous, or last, channel.)
6. The coloured function keys are much easier to differentiate from the number keys, but instead of having just those three keys to confuse with the numbers, now there are 12 keys contiguous with and on the top of the number keys.
   • You really need all those keys, and you have to look right at them to know which one you’re pressing.
   • Yes, they’re different shapes and they are in four different colours, but shape and colour are less important than position.
   • Proprioception is more important than distinguishing the fine differences of touch, and it’s vastly more important than looking at the keys. If you have to look, the arrangement is broken. And blind people cannot look.
7. What could indeed be the most important key on the PVR, the green List button (to display all your recorded programs), is embedded indistinguishably inside this mass of a dozen keys. I always have to look for it.
8. Another rather useful key, Mute, is right below the volume control, which isn’t any worse than being right above it on the 3200, but it’s been a week already and I haven’t developed muscle memory for it yet. I have to look.

I’m not talking about trivil breaches of perfunctory formal standards here. I keep making mistakes with this thing! I hit Fast-Forward for Play and Settings for Mute. I have to hunt around to find Guide (which brings up the program listings and which you need to record your shows) and Info (which tells me the time and what show I’m watching).

And at the very bottom of the remote are controls for picture-in-picture, which are so remotely situated that I haven’t used them since day one. (A Video Source key in that same cluster, like the FireWire and VCR-out ports, is not used by the system at present.)

Someone who didn’t have the 3200’s well-designed remote wouldn’t know how much worse the 8000’s is. You can get used to the layout of the few keys that are tactually discernible by position. But all the other keys are still a mess, and if you’re blind, forget it.

Of course, if you have any kind of problem with dexterity or fine-motor control, you can forget both of them. That will be a story for another day, however.

While I was waiting for the PVR to arrive, I did the obvious thing: I Googled it.

1. Data sheets in general (PDF only for the 8000). The machine’s got:
   • 640×480 resolution
   • “Over 48” megs of RAM
   • SAP, and that is gonna be important
2. “Scientific Atlanta DVR Not So Hot”
3. A posting warned of signal-loss problems with splitters, but I haven’t had any. When I first got digital cable, nobody bothered to tell me you need the superspecial 1 GHz splitter, at a mere $30 each, if you want the thing to work. I was expecting the worst, but it’s fine.
4. “Rogers to rent PVRs”: “With a steep purchase price of $599, Rogers Cable Inc. today announced it is now offering customers the option of renting a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) for $19.95 a month.” (Another source claims it’s actually $11.99 plus $1.99 for “licensing” – a full $5.97 saving!)
5. FAQ (in French)
6. DSLReports forum
7. And, most interestingly of all, Explorer 8000 YahooGroup

Right. My TiVo manqué, a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000, was delivered on Friday, 2004.02.06, by an actual Rogers Cable installer. (So much better than the contractors. Insist.) The installer was an Italian-Canadian in his early 50s. We had quite a nice chat about how tricky it can be to “do media calls.” (Mine aren’t that tricky.)

Since I already had an Explorer 3200 digital cable box (my second – the first was broken, a fact the frontline Rogers reps refused to believe), the installer simply moved all the cables, including power, to the new machine and turned it on. Rogers intallers have a fascinating ruggedized miniature Wintel laptop that wirelessly authorizes your boxen for you. (The serial-number type is very hard to read, though, and the serial numbers are letters, not actual numbers. Is that a D, an O, or a Q?)

The 8000 now sits on my stack of two VHS and two Beta VCRs and a laserdisc player. (My DVD changer is on another shelf.)

[You can also look at the official beauty shots – small or large (5.3 MB).]

The 8000’s back-panel ports are deceptive. I haven’t tried the FireWire out, but I doubt it works, and of the RF connections, only Out 1 (TV) is active. You can attach a VCR to the Out 2 (VCR) connectors, but it won’t get a signal. (I found this out the hard way when I tried to tape a music video off the PVR and simply believed the port labels.) I don’t have enough of a hacker interest to round up a FireWire cable and try out that connector. I don’t even have the thing hooked up to my television using S-Video. I guess I’m middlebrow all the way when it comes to connectors.

The PVR logged on to the Rogers network (first one-way, then two-way) much faster than the installer expected. Programming the universal remote for a stock Sony TV took a while because, as the user manual itself warns, timing and delay of keypresses is important and easy to flub.

We checked various channels to see if they worked, and even though the Wintuition was hollering quite loudly “Better check PrideVision. If any channel is gonna go wrong, it’s PrideVision. Better check PrideVision,” in fact we did not. PrideVision, to which I have subscribed since its first month, is on a tier by itself with Rogers (and has been treated with out right discrimination by other cable companies) in that it’s a digital specialty channel with a separate monthly fee. It’s not a movie channel, basic or premium cable, or an ethnic station. It’s sui generis. And it was unauthorized on the PVR for the entire weekend, finally reappearing on Monday after two phone messages.

And now the fun began.