DVR

So, the DVR saga.

It worked fine last night (thank goodness). I watched the season finales of Bones (sigh), Gossip Girl (yay) and Desperate Housewives (mixed). Everything on our DVR list was fine.

I turned on the TV this morning and went to the DVR list to unmark some watched programs and mark all the new ones taping tonight (Idol, Hell's Kitchen, Reaper and Shark) to save. My jaw dropped in horror.

The top entry on the DVR list was an episode of Project Runway from February 13th.

February 13?! Seriously?! What?!

How did the DVR go from having multiple (at least 15-20) programs from the past few months to having nothing after February 13? And how could it have all these programs from February when these were deleted ages ago? Connor Chronicles, Cashmere Mafia, Project Runway... these episodes have been gone for months!

I tried a few things to fix it, thinking my eyes were tricking me or that it was just a glitch. Nothing worked. February 13 was the most recent thing. I tried playing those programs and of course, the DVR couldn't find them. Because they were not THERE! They were deleted!

On the way to work, I started recreating the list, thinking about what I had and had not watched. Thinking about how I was relieved that we watched Lost over the weekend. That the 2 big shows on the DVR for which we have a lot to watch - Chuck and Heroes - and the last two Journeyman episodes were still there and from before February, so they still worked. I came up with 2 episodes of Moonlight, the last episode of Ugly Betty and the series finale of New Amsterdam. I'm not sure what else was missing. But I didn't think too hard about it because I was confident we would get it back. After all, my theory was that somehow the list had pulled up some stored directory but the shows were probably still there, but couldn't be accessed.

I called the cable company from work and they said I had to call back when I was back home. I didn't think about it too much during the day at work, but I was able to play one episode of Moonlight in the background while I was working.

I got home, spent over 40 minutes on the phone with the cable people and they are sending a technician at the end of the week. I begged and pleaded that they walk through it with me over the phone because I'm not a technical dummy instead of having to set up an appointment, but no luck. The minor things we tried didn't work. And I'm not sure the guy even understood the problem until the very end. To summarize, deleted programs from months ago there. Recorded shows from recent days not there. It's really bizarre. How do things like that happen? How does the list come up "frozen in time" as of February 13, with things marked to save, etc. that were deleted ages ago? How does this happen?

After I got off the phone with the cable company, I unmarked all the items marked to save that I knew weren't on the DVR because they had been deleted. At that point, I unfortunately had to switch from theory #1 to theory #2. All the programs since February 13 have been deleted. They are not hiding on our (almost full) drive. They are gone. Because I unmark those programs and not one of them is in danger of deletion. And it tapes all 4 hours of today's programs. And not one of them has deleted. That can only mean one thing. There is room on the DVR. Usually every day we unmarked the number of hours taping that night. So it was almost full. There is no way it's almost full now. It must be gone.

I am trying to think of what was on there other than the shows I listed above, but I'm not sure. At least we can get through some Chuck and Heroes maybe. We'll see.

Sigh. Saga.