The Weird and The Wacky Meet

Where YouBetIAm comes to write….

Dr. TiVo:  Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About School and Love Watching TV

All last summer, I had an ongoing argument with my VCR.  It didn’t want to record “Sex and the City”; I wanted to throw it out the window when it rebelled against my careful programming instructions. 

                 My VCR was frustrating, and I felt that I had to watch shows immediately or I would run out of tape or they wouldn’t record.  Plus, there was the challenge of programming just by time.  Programs move, or get delayed.  All this worrying about my VCR put a definite damper on my school work.  With me, school work always triumphs over TV, so I missed out on the plot of my favorite shows.

                 Then last summer, when another VCR died, my husband bought us a TiVo for our anniversary.  And my relationship with the device that records television entered a whole new level.

                 TiVo is a digital video recorder, or DVR.  Essentially, it’s a computer that records television to a hard drive.  By getting ride of the cassette tape, TiVo can do some amazing things.

                 I don’t have to be exact in my programming instructions.  TiVo gives me a list of programs I can record, I select the ones I want, and then it records them.  I don’t have to keep track of when the show is on.  If it changes, TiVo changes, and I don’t worry about it.

                 TiVo keeps a handy little menu of shows that it has recorded for me.  I select the one I want to watch, and it plays it, regardless of whether it’s recording something else at the moment.  This is extremely nice for me, because it means I can reward myself with The Simpsons after a long day at school, even if TiVo is recording a documentary when I get home.  In fact, I can even watch the beginning of The Simpsons while it’s still recording the end of it.

                 Because TiVo runs everything through a hard drive, you can pause live television, even if you’re not recording.  That’s because, once you change to a channel, TiVo keeps the last half hour of it for you to rewind, replay and even record.  A feature I use at least five times a day is the instant replay button, which makes the TiVo go back eight seconds if you miss a bit of dialogue or action.  You can rewind further, or even scan forwards or backwards at high speed, but the eight second button is quite helpful.

                 TiVo is an amazing device for someone who is busy with life, school, and work because it doesn’t waste time.  I watch less television now because I don’t spend time waiting for shows to come on.  I don’t catch the last 20 minutes of a program I don’t want to watch.  I don’t channel-surf looking for something to catch my attention.  Everything that I find interesting is at my finger tips.  It’s very freeing.

                 With a broadband connection, you can connect your TiVo to your home computer network with the Home Media Option.  This allows you to program your TiVo from any computer with an Internet connection.  If your psych professor says she’ll give extra credit to anyone who watches a PBS documentary on at 6:00 PM, but you don’t get off work until 9:00 PM, you can go into the computer lab, go to the TiVo website, and when you get home, get your psychology credit.

                 TiVo is extremely user friendly.  You don’t need to spend time reading the manual to learn to record programs.  Everything is straightforward, unlike a lot of other high-tech devices.  TiVo works hard at trying to be pleasing, so that you eventually come to think of it as a person because it will record shows it thinks you might like based on the rating you given other programs.  Even the remote is comfortable and agreeable in your hand.

                 Like other trendy high tech devices, TiVo does not come cheap.  But it is comparable in price to a high-end VCR.  A brand new Series 2 TiVo that can record 40 hours of programming costs $149 on TiVo.com.  The 80-hour TiVo goes for $249, and the 140-hour is $349.

                 TiVo does need to connect to a service to get programming information.  A month to month subscription costs $12.95 per month, and a lifetime subscription costs $299.  The lifetime subscription will pay for itself after two years, but only applies to one box.  The home media option has a one time fee of $99.  This is in addition to your regular cable or satellite dish fees.

                 If these prices are scary, there is always eBay.com.  There is always a variety of used TiVo’s available at low prices.  Some even come with the lifetime service included.  If you decide to shop on eBay, make sure you read the feedback ratings of your seller, and be careful.  Also, it’s helpful to watch for sales on Amazon.com and Buy.com, and rebates from TiVo. 

                 TiVo makes me feel less guilty about vegging in front of the TV, because I have more control over the time that I spend there.  It’s a nice reward I give myself at the end of the day when I need to unwind, without ever having to rewind.

Copyright 2004

TiVo, TiVo Remote, and TiVo Menu

By Amanda Evans

Original Publishing Date:

04/01/04