You Call This Progress? Well, Do You?

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Last night brought yet another reminder that I am ancient. I never record TV shows, but Marian does occasionally, and she uses an old VCR to do it. The old VCR broke a couple of days ago, so she went to Target to get a new one.

But it turns out this is impossible. VCRs no longer have tuners in them, so they only work if they’re plugged into a cable box—which we don’t have upstairs because Marian only watches basic cable stuff and doesn’t need one. This was all news to me since I’ve never paid any attention to TV-recording technology, but a quick check of the web confirmed that VCRs have been mostly tunerless since at least 2007. Personal DVRs don’t appear to be an option either.

So apparently our only choice is to get a cable box upstairs. It might as well be a DVR box, since it doesn’t seem to cost any more—though I’m not really sure, since the primary goal of the Cox Cable web designers seems to be making it impossible to figure out how their services actually work or how much they cost.

In any case, my best forensic guess is that an extra box costs $8.50 per month. So now we’re going to be forced to pay $100 per year to do something we’ve been doing for free for decades. I suppose it will be slightly more convenient, but not by much since Marian doesn’t actually tape all that many shows. Isn’t progress wonderful?

There’s no need for this post to be merely a personal whine, though. Feel free to turn it into a general whine in comments. What do you hate about your cable company? Or about entertainment tech in general? Have at it.

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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