ANGRY MINUTE #0024: Time Warner Cable Boxes
First off let’s take a moment to thank the great FSM that the Holiday season is over. It was fun, but way to busy!
One of the things I did during my Holiday break was visit family. And on the whole my family don’t piss me off (sure we yell and scream but that’s just how my family does things. We are Douchebags after all). It was during one of these family gatherings that ANGER snuck itself into the fray.
It was Christmas Eve, and though I do not celebrate Christmas myself (Pastafarians like me celebrate the season of Holiday instead) I know my family does. So my love and I made the journey to Grandmother’s house, to enjoy a feast of dead animals and the unwrapping of gifts. I got a new wallet, a Mr. Potato Head, and a bracelet engraved with my initials. All was amazing, and anger looked to not be home for Christmas.
Then it started, just like a small snowflake starting to roll off the top of a mountain. For Xmas Grandma got the Sex in the City Season One on DVD. THE HORROR!!!!! Actually I could care less about Sex in the City (unless I’m the one getting the sex) so this was not the angry moment. Grandma doesn’t have a DVD Player. Well that’s no big deal either as I had a spare, so I brought it as an additional gift so she could enjoy her DVDs. Ain’t I just the best?
Now being the “tech geek” it is by law that I must hook up any and all electronic devices for others to play. DVDs are no exception. So off to the bedroom I go to hook the DVD Player up. Grandma has one of them old TVs that only has Coax, but she pays a large sum of money each month to Time Warner to have this big box in her room so she can DVR her shows. Below is an image of a TW Cable Box, very similar to the one Grandma has in her room.
Well if there are no AV Hookups on the TV thank the FSM that TW was nice enough to have them on their boxes. Actually I found 3 AV Hookups on the TW Box, 2 on the back and the ones on the front. Don’t know what an AV Hookup is? I went ahead and highlighted them below.
So I hooked up the DVD Player, turned it on, and pressed the input button on the remote. Nothing. Hmmmmm maybe I hooked it up wrong. So I use the AV Hookups in the back of the box. Try to switch the input again… nothing. The remote is responding, and I see a symbol on the box flash when I try to change the input of the device yet nothing happens. So I go into full troubleshooting mode, checking the cables and all of that… but everything is correct and should be working without issue.
So I swallow my pride and call Time Warner’s Tech Support line. There must be a reason I can’t switch the input, I just can’t understand what it is. So I get somebody on Christmas Eve in Time Warner’s Tech Support building. She seems nice but had a hint of “I don’t want to be at work” in her voice. I kindly let her know what I was doing, and without a skip she responded, “You can’t do that. We disable AV Inputs on our devices.”
Ummm, excuse me? My natural reaction to her response was a simple “Why?”. Why would you disable AV Inputs? Her response, “We disable them as they are not our boxes”.
That’s right, she told me that Time Warner, who SENT the box to Grandma and even HOOKED THE FRAKER UP, wasn’t “their responsibility”. Sure they charge her a monthly fee to have the box, but since Time Warner didn’t create the device they disable functions of the AV Inputs on the device.
This PISSES ME OFF! I understand you not supporting something, but when you SEND a device that ON THE FRONT has these ports you are being what we call in the business a DICKTEASE! Why even send a box with these ports on them if you aren’t going to even let your customers use them? Its total bullshit and I let her know that. But all she could tell me is whatever her script tells her. She couldn’t even give me information on who to complain to. What a WHORE!
I even went onto TW’s website to try and see what the manuals say for these boxes… but the “cartoon” images of these boxes don’t even SHOW the AV inputs on the front of the device. They conveniently REMOVED them from their manuals as if they aren’t really there! These are not the AV Inputs you are looking for… what a Chris CROCKer OF SHIT!
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POSTANGER:
So Grandma didn’t get to watch her DVDs because Time Warner (the Nazi’s of the Cable community) wouldn’t let her plug in a DVD player to her Time Warner Cable Box. I thought we lived in the land of the free, but I guess we live in the “hey we’ll give you a product with all the bells and whistles and then not even let you use these bells and whistles.” If you don’t want me to use something DON’T OFFER IT ON YOUR DEVICES! And don’t give me that BS that Time Warner didn’t make these boxes; TW has a contract with Scientific Atlantic for these boxes so they either should have a cover over the ports or had the ports entirely removed. This is just another instance of Time Warner being total dicks and not giving a damn about anyonje but their bottom line. And then they wonder why people download TV from the interwebs instead of buying Cable… what idiots! VIA REVOLUTION!!!!!
That totally sucks. It reminds me of my cellphone that one of the features is GPS, but Verizon disables the GPS. I do believe Walmart sells a box where you can plug in an AV device and it outputs coax.