I want my ATV

Martin Rowe- June 25, 2012

Three years ago this month, terrestrial broadcast TV went digital. But being as I was a cable subscriber, it didn’t affect my house at all. We continued to use our VHS recorders. Last week, Comcast ceased sending analog TV, going all digital. While digital might provide better pictures, it’s been an inconvenience to say the least.My VHS-only recorders are now useless except to play previously recorded tapes. We have plenty of them and thus we’ll be watching VHS for some time. Most of the tapes contain programs from the five major TV networks (PBS included) and until ATV became DTV, we could record them without a cable box.

Comcast’s solution: Send us two converter boxes so we can continue to use our analog VHS recorders and analog TV. Unfortunately, we like to set a recorder for the entire week. If the shows are on different channels, then we’d have to be home to change the converter-box channel in between recordings.

This is progress? We didn’t have to do that with the old ATV feed.

One of our recorders is a combo DVD-VHS unit with a digital tuner. Because of that tuner, I don’t need a converter box to receive DTV signals of the four major commercial networks plus PBS. As a test, I programmed the unit to record two programs onto a DVD (the unit won’t record digital-to-VHS). The first programmed recording works just fine, but the second programmed recording totally failed.

This is progress? We didn’t have to do that with the old ATV feed.

So now I either have to buy another DVD recorder or look into a DVR unit. But, DVR and TiVo units have drawbacks. First of all, they are subscription services. I don’t want to shell out more money for TV. Second, they use hard drives. What if the drive fails? I lose everything, meaning I need some way to back up the recorded programs.

This is progress? We didn’t have to do that with the old ATV feed.

I want my ATV.