No particular place to go

[austin_dern]

I was wandering about a Radio Shack without much purpose except perhaps to see if they sell replacement Tivo remotes, since my parents' is still not recognizing the 2, 3, 5, and 6 buttons, and it looks like neither they nor anybody else on the continent do. I'm sure there's some reason for this, and it's probably an annoying one. But the thing that was curious is in the section of not-quite-recognized brands of DVD players that they have (plus LG players), they had one little box from Philco. I had no idea that Philco was still in business. I'd supposed that what with it not being the 1950s and there not being much demand for nine-inch black-and-white television screens set in furniture cabinets ten feet long and three feet thick that they'd been assumed into a discorporated corporate heaven. What are they doing making cheap DVD players? I mean besides the obvious.

My father took about fifteen minutes after getting back in before telling me that I really should have been at my cousin's wedding. Perhaps I should have been, but the fact is I'm not that close to her, and she didn't invite me, and a wedding is not the time to make up on fifteen years living several states away from the bride. From reports, though, it was quite the wedding, not quite exceeding the time my mother's youngest brother got married and learned to his surprise, two days before the event, that it really was customary to have a specific place for the wedding ceremony arranged in advance. (As near as I've been able to determine he figured that hey, the township tennis courts are usually pretty free on a Thursday morning, so why wouldn't they let them hold a wedding there?)

In an amusing sideline my parents discovered that there are no places to get food in Delaware. Setting out they had figured they'd go early, stop in at someplace equivalent to a Denny's somewhere in the Lower Counties, and they found that you just can't do that. There must have been people and therefore restaurants in Delaware at some time, but come to think of it, do you know anyone who lives there now either? And can you prove they don't just go to Maryland to eat? My mother was also, apparently, rather taxed that after living in central New Jersey, where you can get to a Starbucks by walking in any direction for at most 350 paces, the path to her sister's is, outside New Jersey, several hundred miles with not a one in sight. My father says my mother counted the miles, and except for this one which was on the wrong side of the highway and which my mother (whom I'm sure was driving) didn't want to make a U-turn for, there was nothing except the Starbucks in the supermarket by my aunt's place. That Starbucks was closed.

Trivia: Robert Bunsen never patented his burner design. Source: The Genie in the Bottle, Joe Schwarcz.

Currently Reading: 1927: High Tide of the Twenties, Gerald Leinwand.

Comments

[argonel.livejournal.com]

You may only be able to get replacement remotes from Tivo. I think they cost around $20. Once you get a replacement you could tear the malfunctioning remote apart and see if you can put it back together again. if it works afterward you would have two remotes that could run the Tivo.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I suppose Tivo Master Command might have replacements. It's just so hard for me to go out and order stuff online, for some reason.

[orv.livejournal.com]

Some of the fancier universal remotes in the "One For All" brand line can control Tivos. The best selection of that brand seems to be found, oddly enough, at Wal Mart. They're pretty inexpensive.

One trick I've learned for fixing remotes with bad or sticky keys is to remove the batteries, disassemble the remote, and clean all the pieces in warm, soapy water. I then rinse it very thoroughly to get rid of all the soap residue, blow it dry with compressed air, then let it air dry overnight before reassembling it. This gets rid of all the residue from finger oils, spilled drinks, etc. and often makes a big difference. It's fairly safe for the remote as long as all the water is gone before the batteries are put back in. Sometimes figuring out how to get it apart is pretty tough, though, and sometimes they glue the stupid things together.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of slightly tempted to try fixing this, although given the weird clamshell shape along which the seam appears I suspect there's no way to disassemble it without ending up with pieces all over the zip code.

A universal remote is a viable alternative, although it does mean my father would never understand how to work it. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

[orv.livejournal.com]

If there are no visible screws, often the case is held together by hooks on one side and slots on the other. Carefully prying the hook side inward will pop it open if that's the case, but it's hard to do without marking up the case. Sometimes you can see inside through the battery slot to see which side has the hooks and which side has the slots.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's definitely no screws visible. It's got to be some special tricky gear. I don't know if I'll make an attempt to patch it up or just go out for a replacement.

For that matter, I might buy my own Tivo and put it on the study's TV set, which is going under-applied at the moment.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

A touch of online searching for me shows that the going price for a from-Tivo remote is $30, though odd-colored ones for $35 and glowing ones for $50 are available. If you wanted to try to open and fix it, there are quite a few TiVo forums about- though I've never studied those beyond "Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select, that was it."

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, now, a glowing one would be quite nifty.

And I'd never known of that hack, but the last hack I looked for was removing the region coding from my DVD recorder in Singapore. And of course now this particular one isn't good for me.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to let you know of it! SPS30S is the TiVo hack- it turns a fairly useless button into a very useful one.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

A very useless button otherwise. I'd never even noticed it before; it was dropped in mentally around the rest of the worthless buttons, like ``A-B'' is on the DVD remote.