Digital cable and high definition are great, but cable companies want you to buy pay-per-view services and they are very willing to annoy their customers if it means a few more sales. They do this not just by listing these services every chance they get in program guides but by putting extra buttons on your remote in places where you are certain to bump them by accident quite frequently. Which may mean you miss some of your favorite show trying to get back to what you were watching, given the slow response time. Usually they slap on more than one such button, despite the fact that getting to the pay per view listings through your menus is also made far more than just convenient: also past the point of being annoying, in fact.
You need not bother to try to reprogram these buttons. Even if the instruction booklet for your remote says you can, you cannot. But you can cut them off, and quite easily. No worries - these buttons will still work even after you cut them off: as recessed buttons - you just won’t ever hit them by accident again. Wouldn’t that be nice? And the remote will look just the same as it does now - visitors will have to examine it pretty closely to tell that its been altered.
Use a sharp, serrated edge paring knife or a utility knife to do the job - slowly, so you get it right the first time and level off the button at the surface of the remote. You may want to cut in from each edge (or side) toward the middle of the button rather trying to make just one cut; trying to make a single cut across often leaves a very small bit of a lip jutting up where the cut ended - which is now too small to get hold of to cut off. Not a big deal, but avoidable.
After a couple careful cuts, you will love your new, convenient remote, without its booby traps; and it takes only a few minutes to make the modification, as it were. As long as you know how to grip a knife, you won’t even have to read an instruction booklet!
The author’s hobby site is BestPaperAirplanes.com a free site with original paper aircraft designs to build and fly.
PhotoperiodEffect.com has information concerning new scientific discoveries in chronobiology and the connection between too much light, too little darkness, and our health.
Tags: box, cable, HD, HDTV, high definition, movies, pay-per-view, programming, remote, television, TV
