Time Warner Cable announced this week that it has launched remote DVR services for Wisconsin digital cable subscribers, which means you don't have to be in front of your TV to program the digital video recorder.
While other pay TV services have expanded DVR services already, Time Warner is southeast Wisconsin's biggest by far.
Cable subscribers here can use the new service by registering for a "MyServices" account and following the directions. You'll need some information from you cable bill to set up an account.
Your computer screen will show you what your DVR has scheduled to record. And it offers a TV schedule to allow you to schedule your DVR remotely, which makes it possible to record programs while you're at work or on vacation.
It's all pretty simple, once you set up a "MyServices" account.
I've often said the DVR is TV's biggest technical innovation in decades. It's made it easy to schedule TV viewing to fit your life.
As the technology advances, it just gets easier to control how and when you watch television.
On TV: The Food Network's Guy Fieri hosts an episode of "Tailgate Warriors" tonight at 9 with teams of Green Bay Packers fans (led by Door County restaurateur Andy Mueller), versus Seattle Seahawks fans. The competition was filmed Aug. 21 in Seattle.
- Me TV is airing a six-hour salute to the recently departed Barbara (June Cleaver) Billingsley with a dozen episodes of "Leave it to Beaver" starting at 1 p.m. Saturday. Me TV is Channel 49.1 over the air, and, in most areas, on Channel 19 for Time Warner and Charter cable subscribers.
- NBC has picked up "Chase" for the rest of the season, along with "Chuck." The network has ordered four more scripts for "Undercovers," but that one isn't out of the woods yet.
- While "V" is, indeed, returning to ABC's schedule in early January, it looks like a short season of only 10 episodes. That doesn't bode well for the show's future. Deadline Hollywood reports that since the show is still filming, the short season will be worked in to allow a proper season finale.
- Redbox has started offering video games for rentals for $2 a night plus tax at some Milwaukee are locations. The suburban Chicago-based company is using Milwaukee to measure customer interest in video game rentals.
- Barack Obama is dropping by Comedy Central's "Daily Show" next Wednesday, less than a week before the mid-term elections, becoming the first sitting president to visit the show. "The Daily Show" is airing from Washington, D.C. next week in advance of Jon Stewart's Oct. 30 "Rally to Restore Sanity" at the National Mall.
Mama bear meet mama bear: TLC has released a clip from the upcoming "Sarah Palin's Alaska," which launches Nov. 14 in the 8 p.m. Sunday slot, showing the former Republican vice presidential nominee with her husband, daughter and niece out salmon fishing in bear country.
Here's the clip:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
