Kid in a candy store

The oddest thing. All of a sudden, I have every premium channel that DirecTV offers. All of them. Every. Channel.

I found out by accident. TiVo lets you set desired movies to auto-record. So if you’ve always wanted to see such-and-such, you just tell it to record it automatically. It’s cool. Anyway, I have a few movies set to auto-record. What happens if they appear on a premium channel is that TiVo will actually tell you it’s going to record, but doesn’t. Or, for fun, it will record 90 minutes of a black screen with the words “to subscribe, go to DirecTV.com.”

So anyway, I saw that Mad Max was set to record on Encore, but I don’t get Encore. Then I saw that it had actually recorded.

I am puzzled.

So I start browsing through channels. I get them all. All. Not just HBO, but all the HBOs, including HBOw (West Coast time). And Cinemax, and Starz, and Encore, and TMC, and Westerns, and Romances and and and and!

Every movie I’ve been wanting to see! Okay, plenty of movies I want to see aren’t showing but I could record FIFTY! This WEEKEND. (Only I don’t have the space on the machine.) But SHIT! I’m overwhelmed, I can’t think what to do. Shit, I could start watching premium shows. I could see Deadwood or the Sopranos or Queer as Folk or anything I want.

Must remember to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. I am Zen with the movies. Breathe.

7 comments

  1. Ben Gruagach says:

    It’s not just you. We’re DirecTV with Tivo subscribers too. I just checked and we’re getting the extra channels too even though (like you) we don’t pay for them.

    I think this must be one of their “freebie weekends” when they make at least some of the extra channels available, in the hope that they will get some people hooked enough to pay for them when they go to subscribers-only. They do “freebie weekends” every once in a while.

  2. deblipp says:

    I don’t know. Usually they tell you. The TiVo menu has a “Showcases” list that tells you what freebies are available, and it’s not there.

  3. OhKen says:

    Mee toooooooo! I didn’t see any promos for it, but it’s the only excuse I can find for it….. unless they just make a big mistake!

    Or my bill next month is gonna be a doozy……..

  4. Dan says:

    Maybe they just like you Deb.

  5. OhKen says:

    But after all that, I was cruising all the premium channels just after 6:00pm, when I happened to hit TCM…… Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton…. Top Hat!

    Man, it doesn’t get any better than that……. 😉

  6. deblipp says:

    Yeah, I hope they didn’t decide to offer everything and charge a la carte.

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