Comcast DVR mute “bug”
Posted on June 30, 2005
Filed Under Internet & Technology | 27 Comments
Not sure if this is a bug or a feature in the Comcast DVR (Motorola 6412).
Set up a series recording to catch General Hospital. TV was off when 3 pm came around. I turned on the TV around 3:40 pm and there was no sound. Hit the “mute” button on the remote which pulled up the Sony “Muting” indicator, but toggling it didn’t make a difference. Tried every button, tightened every connection and couldn’t get the sound back. Then I noticed some white lines at the top of the screen, and it appeared to be the bottom of the words ‘MUTE’…just the bottom serifs of the letters. So the cable box has a “mute” that is separate from the TV, with no apparent way to toggle it.
Google/A9 to the rescue.
Cablevision leaves you the manual to their box and remote. Comcast points you to the “help” and “setup” menu. Nice, but there’s all sorts of hack-like goodness that you won’t find in the standard menus.
Here’s the answer to the mute problem:
- Press the “Cable” button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.
- Press and hold the “Setup” button until the “Cable” button blinks twice.
- Enter code 994. The “Cable” button will blink twice.
- Press (do not hold) the “Setup” button.
- Enter code 00141.
- Press whatever button you want to map the mute function to.
Uh yeah, was just about to try that one. Don’t understand why I didn’t figure it out on my own.
Looking for this solution led to some other nice tips…like a 30 second skip. Haven’t tried this yet, but I will:
- Press the “Cable” button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.
- Press and hold the “Setup” button until the “Cable” button blinks twice..
- Type in the code 994. The “Cable” button will blink twice.
- Press (do not hold) the “Setup” button.
- Type in the code 00173 (for 30 second Skip).
- Press whatever button you want to map the skip
bk_keywords:Comcast, DVR
iTunes 4.9
Posted on June 30, 2005
Filed Under Macintosh | Leave a Comment
Two weeks of nonstop packing, unpacking and general schlepping and today, I crashed. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Only have energy for blogging. 
Big thing this week is [iTunes 4.9](http://www.apple.com/itunes) and its support for podcasts.
Folks either love Apple’s implementation, or they hate it. Yes, there’s ABC, ESPN and Disney in there. The selection of indie podcasts is limited, and for some reason some of the links don’t work right at all. But you don’t have to subscribe to only the podcasts that Apple in their music store. Get the RSS URL of a podcast and then it’s simple to add it via Advanced -> Subscribe to Podcast… In the list, it’s the same as if you subscribed from the music store page. [Podcast Alley](http://www.podcastalley.com) is a good directory site. There are many others.
I think iTunes 4.9 is great for a first version. One of my biggest problems with iPodder or iPodderX was what to do with the files after I finished listening to them. iPodder has a “clean up” menu but that still required me to uncheck those files I didn’t want to keep, or to clean them up on a podcast by podcast basis. I don’t want to save anything. Since I have a Shuffle, I don’t want a playlist for every podcast. I like the way Apple has the podcasts in a separate “Podcast” playlist and I have the preference set to only save the latest episode. If I want to listen to a show that I’ve missed, I can download it. I like the blue dot telling me which shows I haven’t listened to yet. It’s simple and easy for something that I need to be simple and easy. Would be even better if I could share subscriptions across networked computers. Some bugs…like you can’t sort by anything other than release date, and even that is only per-blog.
One other criticism: I wish there was an easier way of getting shows to my Shuffle other than drag & drop. The “Autofill” menu doesn’t include the Podcast list. So I plugged in headphones and I listen to podcasts from iTunes rather than the Shuffle. If I want to listen from the shuffle, I copy a podcast or two over.
So for me, and my casual podcast listening, iTunes 4.9 is a 8 out of 10.
Tiger and kid games
Posted on June 28, 2005
Filed Under Macintosh | 2 Comments
The girls came home this morning. They love their new room. Their new Mac Mini was all set up and waiting for them. Each kid has their own user login in Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). That way when they start school they can keep their files separate and they have their own bookmarks. I set up the parental control features. **But…** many of the Flash/Shockwave-heavy sites they like going to don’t work well in Safari. Had to download Internet Explorer for them. Ick. I’m not worried about their surfing habits…they’re both very good about sticking to the kid sites they like. I sent email to the sites that aren’t working…not expecting that anything will change but it couldn’t hurt.
Comcast
Posted on June 28, 2005
Filed Under Internet & Technology | 4 Comments
So we’ve been [Comcast](http://www.comcast.com) customers for about 36 hours now, and so far I like what I see. It hasn’t been without its hiccups, though.
The service call window was scheduled for 9-11 am yesterday. At 8:30 am the technician calls and asks if he can come now. Of course, I say YES. He sets up the digital box with DVR in the family room. I like the Comcast digital TV menus as compared to Cablevision’s. The DVR is excellent. I like that I can either record two different shows at the same time or watch one thing while another is recording. Can’t do that with Tivo. We’ve been so impressed with the way the DVR works, that we decided not to hook up the Tivo and I’ve ordered a second DVR for the bedroom. They’ll be coming with it on Friday. It’s $9.95 for the Comcast box (plus the standard per box fees that we’d pay regardless) so we’ll be saving $3 per month overall once I cancel Tivo. [Vonage](http://www.vonage.com) works great.
It’s not all roses, however. The technician needed to install a configuration utility on my computer in order to set up our new account and register my modem. I didn’t lease a modem from Comcast. I already owned a Motorola SB5100. I offered my PC laptop for the utility, figuring it would work better under XP than OS X. At least the technician would know his way around, right? Um, no. He pops in the CD and it starts out well enough, I click through the terms & conditions and pick a username and password. Then a strange error message comes up and the rest of the files, something about a support agent, don’t install. The technician says that this is a new configuration utility that he was using for the first time on my system. Um, thanks. He calls in and over the phone, he gets the modem working. I can check my email although something looks funny that I can’t put my finger on, log in to Trillian, surf sites in Firefox. Good. I hook up the Vonage adapter and router, no problem. Great. Technician leaves.
An hour or two later, I log in to Quicken to update my balances as I do every day. Quicken can’t connect to my bank website. Quicken can’t connect to any other website. Neither can Quickbooks. Uh oh. Internet Explorer can’t load any site. It keeps trying to go to a proxy page at 10.8.25.233 or something like that. Now I know why things looked funky in Outlook. Images weren’t downloading in HTML email because it uses the Internet Explorer rendering engine and IE was dead. Not good. Even though I use Firefox as my default browser, I need IE working for Quicken/Quickbooks as well as connecting to CMS sites for work. Not good at all.
I called Comcast and got through to tech support, quickly I might add. I explained what happened. The level 2 support guy didn’t have a clue. I Googled and found it had something to do with a fried hosts file. I wanted the tech support guy to tell me exactly what that configuration file tried to do so I could undo it. His advice, “reinstall Internet Explorer.” I checked Microsoft’s site and found that was not a fun thing to do. Then it dawned on me: System Restore. I never think of using it. Not used to it. I know the exact moment that my system got messed up, so it was easy to dial back to a restore point before that. Did the trick perfectly and all is now well.
Well, except for the fact that the Mac Mini is getting terrible Airport reception. It connects fine to the router, then over the next 30 minutes or so the connection degrades to the point that it disappears completely. There are multiple unsecured wifi access points within range, so I’ll hop on another one only to have the same degrading issue again. To me, that shows it’s not the router since I have to assume that my neighbors aren’t also using Belkin routers. I’ve done some Googling and there appears to be complaints regarding wifi in Tiger, particularly with the Minis. Upgrading to 10.4.1 didn’t help. Handyman is coming tomorrow so I’m going to talk to him about what’s involved in dropping some cable so the computer can be wired to the network.
Licensed to drive
Posted on June 27, 2005
Filed Under Relocating | Leave a Comment
in New Jersey. Yet one more piece of Stamford left behind.
Let’s see…all it took was about an hour of my time, $34, my birth certificate, my marriage license, an ATM card, the deed to our home, my old Connecticut license and a copy of an old tax return (for the social security number). And they said getting a New Jersey license would be complicated! Ha! Seriously, it was great to see that big blank spot next to “restrictions”. I’ve had the “corrective lenses” restriction on my license since I was 16. Now I have surgically corrected perfect version. No written test like we had to take when we transferred our licenses from New York to Connecticut in 1996.
Next step is to get the insurance on Eric’s car transferred over so he can register his car. Once his car is inspected and registered and he has New Jersey tags he can get on the 20 month waiting list for a parking spot at the train station. Glad the dealer will take of my car registration/inspection when it arrives in August.
