The perversity of inanimate objects

I bought a new DVD/CD/whatever player on Sunday to replace our old DVD and CD players (which were becomming unreliable). The new one died (no video) Tuesday night. Last night I bought a replacement, a rather nice JVC XV-N55SL for $100. They seem to have switched to white, rather than the old black which I preferred, but... (Our other video equipment is also JVC, and the remote on the DVD player also controls the TV. Not the VCR, the idiots!)

As I was about to head out to buy the DVD player, flower_cat called to tell me that the VCR had just eaten a tape. Good Guys, where I went for the DVD and had a good selection of JVC, had only one JVC VCR identical to the one that had just croaked. Pass. I also passed on the 3-year replacement warranty -- $35 on a $100 device seemed excessive.

Meanwhile, back on Sunday, I took the old DVD player upstairs for the kids to use. But the TV (which one of our friends brought over a couple of weeks ago for the kids to use) doesn't have AV inputs -- just an antenna input. DVD players, of course, don't have RF outputs. And the recently-deceased VCR (which still has a functional tuner and does have RF out) doesn't seem to have any way to pass its AV inputs through.

So I'm off to Fry's again, looking for both a new VCR for the living room, and an RF modulator for upstairs. GAAAK!