draining the world\’s beer supply one pint at a time

If the world were just, I wouldn’t feel the need to write this.

After almost 2 years of subtle hints from my wife and much less subtle nagging from my parents whenever they saw pictures or caught a glimpse on a video chat or just thought about it, I finally relented and with the assistance of my brother in law and father in law, ran the cables between the TiVo, bluray and wii through the fake wall instead of across the mantle piece. It’s not like I’d had the fake wall put in just for that purpose… Oh wait, that’s exactly why!

Any way… 2 HDMI, 1 composite and 1 component+audio (future) and I reran the cable coax through the conduit I’d also had put in for this purpose to the basement

1 month later, both HDMI ports magically stop working in the middle of the day.

TV was bought from Circuit City 2 years ago.
TiVo Series 3 was bought from Tweeter about 2 1/2 years ago.
Samsung Blu-Ray was bought from Circuit City last year.

As both Circuit City and Tweeter no longer exist, I’m out of luck for store support, so I go to Best Buy and buy an expensive HDMI cable (no other kind exist in the Best Buy universe…. newegg usually has good deals) and test the blu-ray with my upstairs TV with success. The TiVo has component output so I hook that up to the cable that I ran and that works, so I’m pretty sure the problem is with the TV.

After a little more procrastination, I finally call Hitachi customer support (shockingly, 1-800-HITACHI)… and this brings me to the point of this post.

WOAH. One ring and I get through to a real cheerful person who listens, asks if other inputs are working, and after checking the software version on my TV, recommends a software upgrade (I’m 10 versions behind). After suggesting that I call every 6 months or so and ask for an upgrade, she takes my name, address and we chat about the wonders of software upgrades on consumer devices and we’re done. “You should have the card by the end of the week, any problems just call back”. One support person, soup-to-nuts, no “I’ll just put you on hold” no hold music AT ALL. For a company with a product range of the size of Hitachi, I’m beyond speechless…. I’m moved to blog

Of course, I’m still waiting to find out if the software upgrade fixes my problem. I’m betting on expired certificates.