Michael Cook’s Place

Setup

Yesterday I bought a brand new TV. I bought a Sony KDL-32S2010 at a local Best Buy. I did it this weekend because I had a 10% off coupon which would save me money. As it turns out, LOTS of money. When the clerk rang the item up, it already had the 10% discount applied. The coupon wouldn’t scan at all. The clerk apologized, and entered the 10% discount manually. In the end that little coupon saved me 19% off my TV. Not too shabby. I would have bought a TiVo Series 3 at the same time, but they were out of stock. That night, I called around and found another local Best Buy that had 2. I decided I’d pick it up today. I also called Comcast and set up my HD service and got a guy to come out next Saturday to install two cable cards (which they actually seemed quite knowledgeable about, to my surprise).

The Chase

So today I went to the Best Buy that told me that they had two in stock… and they had zero. In fact, the guy there told me that they hadn’t had any in quite a while. I checked the Circuit City across the street, and they had none. I went a couple of miles and checked another Best Buy. They had none. The Circuit City there had none (they seem to come in pairs). The Wal*Mart there had none (and I was actually told Wal*Mart doesn’t sell ANY TiVos). The Target there had none. The CompUSA had none. Sears didn’t have one (and doesn’t sell TiVos). I called a much larger Wal*Mart across town and was told… they had none (and didn’t sell TiVos). Out of pure frustration I decided to call the Best Buy I had bought my TV at just in case.

They had two. Got them in last night.

So I picked one up on my way home. My 45 minute trip to go pick up a TiVo I knew was in stock took… 3 hours.

The things I’d do for a TiVo.

Conclusion

Now I have my Series 3. It’s a VERY nice box. It’s too bad I can’t really use it for a week. The important channels (the HDTV ones) all have random channel numbers. My TV detected 180 different digital channel signals. To use my TiVo I have to manually set the time and channel to record on one of those channels. That’s what the Cable Cards do, they set that up (as well as parse the guide data and let me watch the premium channels, if I had any). My DirecTiVo will get another week or two of service (depending on how long it takes me to watch everything on it).

Post Script

Also note: my Google PageRank has gone up to 7! Wooooooo!