I decided on an Interweb-free day yesterday.

The old bug was doing its worst [feeling very queasy, aching all over and a load of shit like that] so I decided to cheer myself up with my new toy – the satellite box.

In this age of “plug-and-play” we get used to just plugging and playing but this box ain’t like that.  It’s got to be customised to an extent that would drive any hard bitten geek to drugs.  It’s like being given a PC but no screen and then being expected to programme it using a remote control instead of a keyboard.  Great fun.  Even more fun – it has no hard disk.

So after some tears and not a few tantrums I finally got it to use an external drive to store recorded or paused stuff.  It’s connected to the network so I can play all my films and sounds.  Then came the problem of loading up the satellite stuff and all the channels Herself wants to watch, and a few radio stations as well [Classic FM and Gold!].  All is fine and dandy until I discovered I had a selection of a moxy load of satellites to choose from.  I chose Astra.  Then I have a moxy load of providers to choose from.  Even worse, I have to decide which areas those channels were supposed to cover.  I took the simple route – Freesat [from Norn Iron] and Sky [Norn Iron].  The only problem here was that I somehow managed to download around 1440 channels. Shit! Fuck! Bugger!

I discovered I could set it to only download channels that were freely available and not subscription or test stuff.  I was down to a few hundred channels.

I then discovered the best way to edit channels was to use a programme on a laptop.  No problem.  Found the programme.  Only runs on Windoze!  Shit! Fuck! Bugger!

It is working pretty well now.  I have even discovered I have almost total control over the box from my laptop.  I can change channels, browse channels and even switch the television on and off.  Cool!

All I have to do is stick up a little aerial for the local digital channels [a simple job], get used to using a highly complex remote control [still haven’t used half the buttons as I’m not sure what they do] and get used to pausing or recording programmes.

All of this was done with a manual that refers to a different setup to mine and fuck all in the way of help on the Interweb.  I’m kinda proud of myself.

I now have forty television channels and all free.

And all showing shite.