Communiqué from the cyber front

At the beginning of the month we acquired a new cyber device, otherwise a shiny new Samsung television, as reported at reference 1. This to report a setback, what losing belligerents sometimes call a retreat to a prepared position, sometimes a euphemism for having been hammered.

We had been getting on fairly well, despite the continued absence of red button news from BBC, with a diet of terrestrial television during the day and old-fashioned detective dramas during the early evening. Old-fashioned in the sense that on Freeview they would generally have appeared before 21:00 and would not involve too much - if anything - in the way of violence, sex, realism or important social issues and problems.

Then, mysteriously, one of the two services to which we had subscribed, ITV Hub, vanished. That is to say the icon was still present, you could still search for its programs, but when you clicked on anything the screen went blank, apart from the volume control icon. This was a couple of days ago. And half our evening viewing options vanished with it.

We wondered whether the computer driving the hub was going through a sticky patch. A bit improbable, as it was clearly alive and well on the laptop on which I am typing this. We wondered about opening up the fat e-manual, but BH thought that this was a bad idea. We wondered about phoning up Richer Sounds, who would no doubt have tried to be helpful - despite it being very hard to be helpful in such matters over the phone. A last resort.

Then last night, enough was enough, and at around the watershed hour of 21:00, I found my way to support on the screen. Dropped down through various menus until I was offered what appeared to be a revert to factory settings option. An option of last resort on personal computers and mobile phones; an option which is likely to trash all one's possibly extensive personalisation. Notwithstanding, the thought at 21:00 was that there had not been all that much of that, so there was not much to lose.

Except that there was quite a bit of running and up down stairs to key six digit key code numbers into mysterious websites and to look up obscure passwords which I had taken the precaution of storing on the laptop. I had to find pencil and paper. Very old-speak.

And after about half an hour or this, ITV Hub reappeared. To be on the safe side I spent a few seconds with an old-fashioned detective drama.

Some fun and games for BH this morning, while I continued to snooze, but all seems to be well.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/cyber-flatpack.html.

Reference 2: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/UE43BU8500KXXU/.

Reference 3: https://www.richersounds.com/.