It worked! My new DVD player succeeded in recording both the F1 season-opener qualifying session and the race itself, for which I was most grateful as both were live on cable at 3 AM PST. You may recall that in hyping the race in a prior blog I showed concern over my inability to program the device. For $30 our local Circuit City tech-head checked my connections (all correct) and declared I should ignore the Samsung instruction book and set the recorder at channel 3 and the cable box at TSN's channel 5. His advice was worth every penny as the new qualifying system was exciting and the Bahrain GP became a wire-to-wire chase between two world champions and four manufacturer teams. The Official Formula 1 Site tells the tale of Fernando Alonso's sensational victory over Michael Schumacher.