Okiedokie so far…

First things first: My Weakknees.com 1 terrabyte hard drive arrived almost a week ago, so I got that out and installed it in a jiffy. No problems there. I was multitasking on hold with Tivo to get my Lifetime Membership transferred. While juggling the Torx screwdriver and my iPhone with Tivo, I discovered that my credit card was missing. Last seen in the hands of my chinese food delivery dude who forgot to give it back to me last night. So I used the landline to call them to see if they would give it back to me. They claimed I lost it and had I checked my front pockets. Ya. Whatever. While continuing to hold for Tivo, I called the bank to get the card fraud checked, shut down, and reissued. No fraudulent charges at least.

Finally got through to Tivo and got the membership transferred, and finished up the hard drive install. Realized I forgot to order an HDMI cable online for cheapsies, so ran down to BestBuy against my longstanding boycott to grab one. Discovered that the cheapest HDMI cable they sold was $50 bucks, and went up to about $130 after that. No thanks, motherfuckers. Thanks for reconfirming how hard you suck. Will make due with RCA audio and component video for now, and one of the roomies will pick one up tomorrow at Central Computer for about $14.

Anyway, back at the ranch, I have an HD TV (Sony Wega tube) but have never HD’d anything since I had an old Sony Series 1 Tivo. Just plugging the new Tivo HD in was a remarkable experience. Sooo smooth and pretty. Yay.

I don’t have my multi-stream CableCARD thingum yet, which is essentially a PC card that plugs into the front of the box, replacing the cable box and giving me dual-tuner HD capability. That arrives thursday (along with an “installer,” who, by all blog accounts, will not be able to get it working, will blame my Tivo, and leave without fixing it. I will have to schedule a few more visits and spend 20+ hours on the phone with Comcast. Crossing my fingers I am a lucky one). Without the CableCARD there is only so much setup I can do.

The CableCARD will cost an additional $2/mo or so, but I’m losing the cable box rental of $7/mo, so I net ahead. Since we already have the orgiastic top cable package, the HD is already covered once the card arrives.

Heroes is recording on the old box as I do the setup and type this, so I didn’t install even the basic cable into the new box. Just trying to get as far as I can without with the interweb connection.

The lineup setup process is different than the old model. Rather than asking for my cable company name and giving me cryptic choices like “basic extended rebuild” it simply asked me if QVC was on #36 (yes) then it claimed to know all it needed to know. WIthout the CableCARD it assumes I have basic 80 channel cable, so I am unable to start setting up my season passes in advance of the cable “installer.”

The remote setup worked like a charm this time. Having a newer model TV this round made it easy. Power, volume, mute and even TV input source worked on the first code. Hurrah. I am currently without an audio receiver, so will have to wait for that setup for a bit.

I am amused and frustrated to see that Yahoo! Photos is prominently displayed as the first item under the “music photos & more” menu, since Yahoo! photos went away a few months ago. Boo. Y! Weather and Traffic were relatively easy to setup after very painstakingly entering my Yahoo! ID and password—not a fun task using the idiot 1-letter-at-a-time-using-the-remote method required by the tivo.

There’s also the nifty new Podcaster feature. Yay. It won’t seek the feed when you send to any old URL though. Boo. Typing in a phobos.apple.comblahblahblah URL is too much to bear. I found something called Galleon, which will supposedly grab all my iTunes podcasts and transfer them to the Tivo HD using TivoToGo… which doesn’t work with the Tivo HD or Series 3 yet. Boo. Rumored to be coming in November.

And I amused myself for 10 minutes playing “Wordsmith” (aka Scrabble) and SameGame (aka Bejeweled LE).

More setup notes after my CableCARDs arrive and I can start making it do real DVR things.