isoglossia — pending reconstruction

Thanks for agreeing to house-sit for us. In case you want to watch TV or something while you’re here, let me give you some very simple instructions.

First, of course, turn the TV on. There’s a button on the side here. It’s a little awkward to reach it, I know, so you can also do this by using the remote. It’s this little flat silver one. Actually, though, it doesn’t do much, so for watching TV the one you really want is this big flat gray remote. But it’s a little weird: there are two red “Power” buttons, and the one you want is this little one near the bottom. This big one up here turns the DVR on and off. You don’t have to use this remote to power up the TV, though. You can also turn the TV on with the little flat silver remote, as I said. Alternatively, this one, the oval silver Philips remote, will turn the TV on, too, but you don’t press the “Power” button on that one, you press the “TV/AV” button. The tiny little white remote is the only one that won’t power up the TV.

Oh, and that long thin beige plasticky one. That controls the cable box, but we don’t use the cable box. So you can forget about the long thin beige plasticky remote.

So once the TV is on, you use the big flat gray remote to change channels. Notice that there are two sets of “Channel” buttons, though, and if you use these ones up near the top, you’re changing the input channel, not the TV channels. So you want the little ones hidden away down at the bottom. We’ve got BBC, CNN, and the local Slovenian and Croatian channels down near the bottom, and above those are Discovery and the National Geographic channel and so on. Eurosport? Yeah, it’s like number 45 or something.

Oh, and if there’s a weird error screen that says “URL could not be fetched” or something, that just means the DVR isn’t powered up and the TV is trying to talk to the cable box we don’t use. Use the big flat gray remote to turn on the DVR, which also acts as a TV tuner. It’s the big red “Power” button, the one near the top, not the little red “Power” button used to turn the TV on and off.

You also need this same remote to control the volume of the TV, and those buttons are also tucked away down at the bottom. It’s a little counter-intuitive.

If you want to watch a DVD, help yourself. There’s all kinds of TV stuff, “Arrested Development” and “The Office” and stuff up here on the shelf above the TV, and there are some movies over there. The upper DVD player is Region 1, so you need it for “Arrested Development” and any other North American stuff, but if you want to watch “The Office” you need to use the lower player, which is Region 2.

Oh, and if you use the Region 1 player you need to change the input channel of the TV, which you do with the upper channel buttons on the big flat gray remote. Set it to “EXT 2” and it’ll pick up the DVD player. You need to use the oval silver Philips remote to control the DVD player. And when you’re using that player, the volume is no longer controlled by the big flat gray remote, because the sound is coming through the stereo, so you’ll want to use the oval silver Philips remote to control the volume.

Unless you’re watching a Region 2 disc, that is. For that, as I said, you need the lower player, and then you control the volume with the big flat gray remote. And for a Region 2 disc, make sure the TV input channel (upper channel buttons on big flat gray remote) is set to “EXT 1”

No, the discs aren’t marked what region they are.

Most of the good stuff, though, is on the AppleTV. For that you need the tiny little white remote. It’s an Apple product, obviously, so of course it’s super-simple to operate. You know, “It just works” and all that. So, you press “Menu” and you get the menu, then you select “Movies”. Even if you want to watch TV, say, the American “Office”, you choose “Movies” because the AppleTV thinks everything, music videos, TV shows, movies, is movies. Hmmm? I don’t have any idea. In there you scroll around until you find what you want, and you just press “Play”. Simple.

Oh, and if you can’t find what you want, it’s probably because nothing is really alphabetized. Like, for some mysterious reason, all the “30 Rock”s got a little dash put in front of their name when we transferred them out of the iPod, so they don’t show up where you’d expect. You could just watch them via the iPod, and in that case you’d want to make sure the TV input channel is on “AV” rather than “HD”, and to control the iPod there’s another tiny little white remote. Yeah, identical, but they’re linked to the devices, so you have to have the right one. I’ll show you later.

Anyway, back to the AppleTV. Before you can use it, you’ve got to set the input. For that you need the little flat silver remote. You turn the TV on (doesn’t matter how) then you press “AV” on that remote. No, the little flat silver remote, not the oval silver Philips remote. So, you’ll get an input menu, and you select “HD”. To select, you actually scroll to the right for some reason, but you’ll figure that out.

Okay, so now you power up the AppleTV. No, there’s no “Power” button. You do it by holding down the “Play” button on that little white remote, and then you go to “Menu” and “Movies” and then you find what you want to watch. You can pause and rewind and so forth using the little white remote, but the volume controls don’t control the volume, they’re used for scrolling up and down. To control the volume you need the oval silver Philips remote. The big flat gray remote is unnecessary with the AppleTV, but you’ll need either it or the little flat silver remote to power up the TV itself. Or the oval silver Philips remote. Whatever.

Oh, you might also have to go to “Menu” and then “Source” to select the right computer, because the AppleTV talks to both of them. The desktop has all the movies on it and the laptop is full of “Daily Shows” and stuff like that. Oh, and make sure the external drive is plugged into the laptop if you want to watch those. The iTunes library on the Mini is called “JDS’s music” and the one on the laptop is called “JDS’s music”. You can tell the difference because the Mini’s library has a little infinity symbol next to it. It should be lit up…

You might get an error message about the show you want to watch not being available. Just make sure that the machine you want to access is turned on and iTunes is open. Occasionally you might have to restart iTunes. No, I don’t know.

When you’re done watching, you use the little white remote to power down the AppleTV by holding down the “Play” button. Turn off the TV with the little flat silver remote, or with the big flat gray remote, but use the little button at the bottom to do that, because you use the big one up top to turn off the DVR. Oh, and I almost forgot — if you want to watch any DVR’d stuff, there’s tons of “Teletubbies” on there if the kids want to watch that. Have them use the big flat gray remote to select “EXT 1”. Actually, first they’ll need to make sure the TV is not on “HD”, so give them the little flat silver remote and tell them to press “AV”, then they scroll down the menu to “EXT 1”, then scroll right to enter. Then with the big flat gray remote they also have to select “EXT 1”, which they can do with the upper set of channel buttons (the lower set controls the TV channel, remember, not the input channel). Then they go to “Disc Menu”. They might get a “No Disc” message. That just means that it’s looking at the DVD tray, not the hard drive. So they select “HDD” with the button below the big red “Power” button, and it will look for the Teletubbies on the hard disc. To play one, tell the kids to select “Play” then “Enter” — no, they don’t push the “Play” button, they select “Play” from the menu, there’s a difference — and then they use the arrow buttons to scroll around until the episode they want to watch is highlighted (the Little Bo Peep one is awesome!). Then they just hit enter, and the Teletubbies should start to play. DON’T let them press — sorry, I mean SELECT — “Enter” if they accidentally selected “Erase”, which is right next to “Play”!

If there’s no sound, have them make sure that the “Mute” button hasn’t been pressed on either the big flat gray remote OR the little flat silver remote. That happens all the time.

There’s a bookshelf in the hall, too, if you’d rather just read.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO NABLOPOMO 2006:
Internal haircut monologue
List of Grievances