Audio/Video Hell

Jun 01 2006

Just when I think I’m getting more and more settled every day, I got an unexpected surprise last night. My cable got shut off. It’s not from non-payment, I pay all my bills on time every month. The cable company screwed up. See, I had an overlap in service on all my utilities, so they all ended at my old address yesterday, but started at my new address on the day I signed the lease. So Saturday when I moved in, I got the tv hooked up just enough so I could watch tv, and yes, I had my digital cable box with the DVR with me. Plug everything in, works fine. But last night, just a bit after 8pm when I was on the computer doing some data entry, the tv went silent. I went and looked at it and it said my set-top box was not authorized for use. So I called the cable company. The tech that I talked to said it was a billing thing, and oh, they close at 8. So I quickly hooked up my dvd player, which was actually about 20 minutes because I have no aptitude when it comes to audio/video stuff like that. I can find the plug that goes into the wall, but after that I’m lost. Anyway, since I have a VCR and non-cable ready tv, I also have an RF modulator. One of my a/v geek friends told me the sequence to hook it up in, and I wrote it down way back then so I wouldn’t forget. It’s worked like a charm.

So, when I called the cable company when they opened this morning, I got billing who told me that my box hadn’t been switched to the new address. Yeah, that explains why it worked since Saturday and suddenly stopped working last night. Then they did a few things on their end to move the box to my new address and reset it, but that still didn’t work, so I got transferred to a tech again. At least this one didn’t sound like she was in India. She said my sequence was wrong. Ok, that really explains why it worked for 2 WHOLE YEARS at my old address without any problems, and why I had tv service until it got shut off before I even hooked up the other equipment. Yeah. Anyway, she walked me through the new sequence, which I wrote down, and for some odd reason it worked. Now hopefully my DVD player still works because the shelf it was on collapsed when I accidentally knocked the support out of place, and it all fell down. I’ll find out later.

Now all I have to do is hook up the receiver and CD player. Those two on their own I can handle, but I really can’t figure out how to get tv sound out of the receiver, which I would really like because my cheap tv has crappy sound and watching DVDs is frustrating sometimes. I think there’s something about testosterone that bestows a/v knowledge upon people. Being a girl, I obviously don’t have enough testosterone running through my veins to get it right. I need to recruit a guy friend of mine to get that hooked up.

I’m actually kinda glad I didn’t have my computer online yet when all that happened last night, because I was trying to balance my checkbook and pay bills, which I usually do online, so I can just imagine that I would have been in the middle of hitting “send” for my online payments when everything got shut off. Having no tv was annoying, but that really would have pissed me off. The wonderful tech girl I spoke with this morning assured me that I should have no problems when I hook up my internet, and I really hope she’s right.

In other news, I didn’t get much else done as far as unpacking goes last night because of the a/v issues. I also had some errands to do so I really didn’t feel like it. At this point I’ll most likely wait until Saturday, an actual day off, to get some more stuff done since although my place is still crowded with boxes, it is functional. And that will have to do for now.