Troubleshooting Your Cable Box

When you have digital cable, you probably will get a cable box to get the signal into your television. These used to be more common, but with regular cable, most of the time the line can go directly into your television set, but this will depend on what type of television you have. If you have a digital cable, your cable box does more than just run signal into your television; it can help you use all the great features that some digital cable providers have to offer.

In my case, I have a cable box from Time Warner Cable. This particular cable box is also a DVR. DVR stands for digital video recorder. I no longer have to use my VCR to record programs I want to see, as my cable box does it for me. It works a lot like Tivo, but never having had Tivo, I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that I can choose any show from my cable guide and press record. The cable box takes care of it for me after that. I can choose how long I want to record, or I can just choose one show.

My cable box doesn’t hold a lot of shows, but it has enough space for everything I need. I have a show I record each week, and there are movies and other special events that I wanted to save. The only problem is that in order to save these shows, I have to find a way to get them off my cable box and onto a DVD or VHS tape. It is easy to do, I am told, but I have yet to get a DVD burner, and I really don’t want to save anything on VHS any longer.

My cable box also allows me access to pay per view movies offered by my cable company. With the touch of a button on my remote I can see any movie they have to offer. These movies are protected though, as you cannot save them on the DVR on your cable box. I know this because my husband tried, but it refused to record. I guess it makes sense because it is pay per view. So if I really want a movie, I can buy it when it is released on DVD, or wait for it to come on HBO or another movie channel and record it on my digital cable box to view again.