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Rabid TiVo Fanaticism
surfacearea writes "The New York Times [free reg] is running an article that, without sounding like over-the-top blatant product placement discusses the reasons why TiVo owners are at times frighteningly fanatical. Personally, I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there."
Heck... I'd very gladly into the fanatiscism if only they'd offer Canadian guide content on most of the common (but few and far between) PVR's out there. Can't even be done with most software, darnit! :)
Personally, I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there.
Huh? What a bizarre, ill-informed remark to make. The cost-benefit ratio would be ridiculous.
Why not just buy a recordable DVD drive and record TiVo programs on to that? Oh, you probably don't want to check out recordable DVD drives until they make one that has a MiniDV deck built in.
"...why TiVo owners are at times frighteningly fanatical."
I can't say it's a huge surprise. Tivo (and variants, I have a Replay TV for example...) has this way of making your TV work within your schedule. It's just a glimpse of how cool TV really could be. Sadly, the broadcasting companies think it'll hurt their ad revenue.
Personally, I can't wait until I can easily exchange shows with friends. (that would include knowing a bunch of people with a similar device...) If I had this capability a couple of years ago, who knows what Futurama's fate would have been? I mean, how was anybody supposed to catch it the way Fox schedules their shows?
"Derp de derp."
Personally, I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there.
Yeah, it would be such a shame to lose all those old Will & Grace episodes. But seriously, how many add-ons does it have to have before buy it? mp3 and ogg decoding? programmable from any computer? hackable? Id be happy if it does what it does efficiently and reliably. What's the facination with bloating products, adding unnecessary features? My fire extiguisher doesn't heat up hot pockets, nor do I want it to. It's a fire extinguisher.
I have also felt the same way about my TiVO. I feel like I have broken the shackles from the schedule. I don't know what times certain programs come on, because I watch them when I want to. Now, I haven't gone and convinced anyone to buy one, but I have always spoke positively about them when people asked me about mine. I had not realized that TiVO hadn't advertized in two years.
Off Topic (tm), but how did NYT figure out how to make a popup activate under mozilla? That (VISA Gold) was the first popup I have seen in months! Moz guys, you need to look at that code some more!
One thing people rarely talk about is the fact that using a tool like Tivo actually subtly changes your outlook on yourday to day life.
Local news, TV advertising, radio advertising and the like play to our basest insticts, vanity, sex and fear. We naturally pick up on these things and they use it to their fullest advantage. Tivo, NPR and other methods of controlling advertisings impact are hugely valuable.
I'd go into the benefits but it would sound to Ra Ra Ra. I would most likely stop watching TV without my Tivo. Watching TV without Tivo is a completely depressing and morbid experience that, overtime, leads to depression, anxiety and even MORE consumerism.
I picked up a Tivo that patched into my Direct TV dish. Doing a little homework, they persist the encrypted stream on the local hard drive rather than something that could be ripped. Disappointed, I bit the bullet and picked one up anyhow.
My god, does that change satellite TV.
First off, it makes 'VCR programming' bonehead easy. Get a list of all sci-fi shows for the next couple weeks, pick what you want, and eventually they will be waiting there for you. Pick a show like Futurama or Cowboy Beboop, and it will snag every episode. The only downside is how good of a job it can do if you set it for Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues - a couple marathons later and you will have more shows than I'll let my little one watch. As for persisting files, I prefer to push stuff into my computer to strip out the ads before ripping them to removable media. Turns out the downside - not ripping direct to dvd-r - was a major plus. Good Eats or Serial Experiments: Lain fits soo much better after taking out the credits, ads, and all the other things that gets shoveled in the non-premium channels.
Second, there is no prime time. Time and channel has no meaning at all. I don't spend a lot of time watching TV, so what I was interested in - it is two clicks away. Think of Tivo as limewire - you find the content you want, queue it up, and let it download whenever.
Lastly, the pause and fast forward are handy. Once you get in the habit that most of your viewing is a local file rather than something you happen to catch at the right moment and channel, you start expecting the same from live TV. Nothing is more aggravating than hitting FF, only to find you are on the tip of a live feed.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Today at 12:30 pm I was at my grandmother's house who does not have anything other than over-the-air TV. The same Ronco infomerical was running on both the Fox and UPN stations in town. In fact, the only stations that were not showing infomericals were PBS, the ABC affiliate who had barely-watchale public interest drivel, and the three Spanish-speaking networks running in an area where most of the population doesn't speak that language.
It's over for the purely commercial-supported TV. Over the air TV now consists of local news and access to the "major networks". At times when there is no news or national program, the station effectively puts on a program of negative value just to keep the tower warm.
We're already paying subscription rates for most of the TV programs we get. The loss of ad revenue to the TiVo-ish technologies is simply going to mean that they'll have to raise those subscription rates a bit, and that some of the marginal projects that are going forward today won't be able to go forward in the future. (Does the world really need ESPNews?)
Just because there's a change in business models forced by technology doesn't mean it should be blocked, the businesses involved just need to learn to adjust.
WAKE UP YOU BLIND FUCKING IDIOTS!
...hell, you pay through the nose for your doublespeak.
It's TELEVISION. It's a goddamn scripted version of what someone -- a someone with a vested interest in not upsetting you about anything whatsoever so their advertisers stick around -- thinks life should look like.
Your finger pointing at the moon isn't the moon and excited phosphor choreographed to look like life isn't life! PUT THE FUCKING TIVO, REMOTE, DVD, INSERT-YOUR-FAVORITE-OPIATE-HERE DOWN AND EXIST.
Jesus H. Christ on a greased up pogo stick... Isn't this the crowd that is so anti-1984? Yet you welcome
My
Limekiller
Amen to that last statement. After several hacks to Tivo-Tivoweb-Turbonet-etc.. I find it almost impossible to watch television the old way.
Do you want this because you want to "share" what you've recorded with friends? If you sell what you've recorded, that's clearly illegal. If you don't profit by this activity, it's not clearly illegal, but it's not clearly legal, either. In the past, it's been unlikely to be enforced; but the times, as you may have noticed, are changing fast.
Time shifting is legal. Tivo, as is, is a wonderful machine for time shifting. Beyond that, the ice gets thin.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Using the SuperVCD format or Divx/Xvid would be a much more cost-effective use of such drive. for just 20 per show, it would be totaly worth it. Of course, 99% of all people would never watch 99% of their disks again.. :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There's no reason to integrate a DVD recorder into a TiVo, and actually quite a number of reasons not to.
You can buy a standalone dvd recorded these days, just plug it into your tivo just like you would a regular vcr.
The cost of adding a DVD recorder to a TiVo would raise the price over the $600-700 mark which puts it out of the realm of most home buyers. Plus, a large number of us don't want that functionality, which makes it a niche product in an already niche market.
And they will soon have the HDTV tivo. though frankly, the investment across the board for HDTV is going to keep me out of the market for quite a bit.
Although, unlike sex, I can just about guarantee the first time with a TiVo will be great.
And, as you can see from this thread, nobody has posted that they have a TiVo and don't love it. The fanaticism is justified, as this is truly a lifestyle-altering device.
I got my TiVo just over a month ago. Now, I don't know what I'd do without it. When I get home from work, I can spend the evening watching what I want on TV, instead of what just happens to be on at the time. In fact, I've discovered (well, actually TiVo suggested to me) a couple programs that it turns out I like quite a lot, and I catch every episode, and I have no clue what time they're on, and I only know what channel they're on because TiVo stores the channel's logo in the program listing. My only complaint is that I want another one now to resolve some scheduling conflicts (though TiVo generally does a good job at managing those itself when one of the programs is on a cable station that replays their shows throughout the day).
NO CARRIER