Wednesday, May 5, 2010

What I Learned

I had every intention of documenting this on Monday, but whew, what a week I've had thus far....

This past weekend I learned that AT&T Uverse DVR/cable boxes can't be moved by me. Well, they can but they won't work.

I recently purchased a fancy new television for my fancy new living room. Since, I didn't really want to have the technician come out and get me a new box just yet, I figured I could move the one from the bedroom to the living room and hook it up. My biggest concern at the time was that I would lose the shows that I had saved....but that was a moot point.

Saturday morning, I get up and I start moving things around and getting the new television all set up. I unplug the box from the bedroom and take it out to the living room ready to get it set up. Turns out that the connection in the wall isn't quite ready for prime-time. The cable is run and the plate is in the wall, but the little thingy that you screw the cable from the box to is actually missing. Drat.

So, I take the box back into the bedroom and get it set back up. Yippee!! None of my shows have gone missing so everything should be back to square one. Should be....

As I'm watching a show, it freezes in the middle and there is nothing that I can do. So, I get out my handy-dandy owners manual and figure out that I just need to do a reboot, which I do. Problem is that it freezes in the middle of the reboot and I get a big red X in the middle of the screen. So, I grab my phone and call the 1-800-number and after a series of questions the computer generated voice on the other end of the phone says to reboot the box, again and that should fix the issue, but if it happens again "he" will keep my ticket open for 24 hours and "we'll" pick up where we left off.

I reboot, again. It fixes it this time....Until Sunday, when it starts freezing up again and the reboot freezes as well. I call the 1-800-number again and this time after only a short series of questions I'm actually kicked over to A Real Live Person (I felt like Pinocchio). After explaining every that had occurred, including my moving the box, the RLP said, "Yeah, sounds like you didn't turn the system off properly before you moved it, oh and you can't move the box to another room as it is routed to go only to that port, blah blah blah. Um, that red X is the disaster recovery symbol, if 'this' doesn't work we'll have to send a tech out with a new box." Luckily, whatever magic the RLP did fixed my issue.

Who knew Uverse was so touchy....