The Worst Time For Your Product To Fail

D and I have the Time-Warner provided Scientific Atlanta 8000HD hi-def DVR cable box. When we first got it, it was the only way to get HD cable DVR service. Our existing TiVo couldn't do hi-def, was single tuner, etc. The only HD TiVos that were out there were for satellite or for over-the-air, neither of which was useful to us.

We toyed with getting a new Series3 TiVo a couple times in the last few weeks. We both missed the TiVo interface -- its ease of use, the way it always "just worked" for us.... But it always came down to "Is now the right time to do this? The Time-Warner box is doing the job, even if we don't like it all that much," especially with a list price of $800 for the box.

Two years, and two cable-boxes later, it had started to act... quirky. Just the other day it mysteriously deleted some programming way before it was necessary to do so. But still we persevered. Maybe there was some bizarre "pre-delete" logic happening. After all, it had about six hours of hi-def programming scheduled for the following evening as it would be recording a whole bunch of finales.

Fast forward a little bit to this evening.... The unit has a whopping total of three hours of low-def programming stored on it, set to "do not delete". It had another two hours of today's programming (D has a daily recording of Dr. Phil and Oprah), neither of which had been watched yet. It has held a lot more on it. Tons.

It had two simple tasks:

1. Record American Idol Finale.
2. Record Lost Finale.

As we were watching Idol (on delay), around 9:06 I decided to sanity-check the "currently recording" list... and found it NOT recording Lost. Worse, when I quickly bailed out of the "watching the recorded A.I.", and jumped to ABC-HD live, no matter how much I told it to record it, and it said "OK", it failed to do so. It continued to show "Lost 9:00-11:00" in the "Scheduled Recordings" column, but completely failed to act on it. Also, the Oprah and Dr. Phil episodes were gone, deleted as thought it needed room for them, but that couldn't possibly have been the case.

I told D I was going to watch Lost in HD, Live, while Idol recorded, since it was recording Idol. Five minutes into this, though, I realized I would never hear the end of it if we watched Lost live, and she lost her Idol finale because of the flaky box. So I retired to the office to watch Lost live (giving D updates every commercial... again Lost is more "my" show than hers, but she has a passing interest in it). D is now out in the living room watching Idol on delay. We keep each other updated on "what's going on". It's pathetic and annoying but the only option this piece of junk has left us with.

And so I decided there and then that -- when we get back from the honeymoon -- that piece of shit is heading out the door and TiVo is getting some cash from us. It's just that simple.

You put a lot of trust in a DVR. You trust that you can leave it to record your shows and they'll be there when you get home. The Time-Warner box betrayed that trust at the worst possible time, and signed its own death warrant in the process.