At 2am, Sunday March 11, most locations in the North America will switch to daylight savings time by setting the clock forward one hour. Undoubtedly, you'll be inundated with reminders about it in your local newspaper, TV and radio news and all over the web. 

For most of us, this will be just like any other spring where we set the clock forward to gain a bit more daylight later in the day. The difference this year is that it's occurring in March instead of its normal "spring forward time" which has historically been the first Sunday in April. 

What are the obvious devices you'll want to be sure make the change properly?

• Clocks (home, car, etc.)
• Watches
• Alarm systems
• Sprinkler systems
• Automatic lights
• PDAs (smart phones will likely sync with the cell phone carrier)
• Computers (for Windows and Mac OS X users, make sure you have the latest system updates and it'll be automatic)

What's not so obvious? Read more to find out.

There are a few devices you may not have thought about that could really have an impact in your home theater. The key device is your DVR. The last thing you want to do is expect that you'll get your favorite Sunday sports shows, The Simpson's episode or Dresden Files, only to find out that you were an hour off. This includes DVRs from cable companies and satellite providers as well as independent products such as TiVo, Replay-TV, Windows Media Center, Mac-based media center setups, Linux-based media center setups and others. Each device will have a different requirement to make sure its time is correct, but check it early Sunday to verify that it worked. 

The cable and satellite providers should properly sync up their service at 2am. TiVo Series 2 and Series 3 devices with active service plans should already have an update that assures a proper move to daylight savings time. If for some reason you've disconnected these devices from the phone line or Ethernet, just re-connect and force a Connect Now. TiVo Series 1 won't be getting the update, so you should test your Series 1 with an unimportant program on Sunday to check out its behavior. At a minimum, the guide will likely be off one hour and that could affect recording until April. Windows and Mac-based solutions with the latest updates will be set to make the change automatically.

What should you do if you find your guide is off an hour? If you can't manually change the time on your device, you can immediately solve the problem by setting your DVR to your program and record one hour earlier so that you'll get your program for sure. Secondly, check out the provider's web site. Thirdly, give the company's tech support a call.

Good luck and sleep fast on Saturday night. You're losing an hour.

Let us know your experience here. 

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