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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."
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.
The RIAA can take my TiVo from my cold, dead hands!
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/fashion/20TIVO.h tml?ex=1051416000&en=a77422bb2a91649e&ei=5062&part ner=GOOGLE
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
"...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."
Back when TiVo was new, some friends of mine got it. They tended to say things like "TiVo has lots of minor usability bugs and YOU HAVE TO BUY ONE RIGHT NOW ANYWAY!!!". As hackers, of course, they wanted to be able to change things, but the improvement in their TV viewing experience was the big appeal.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
You can do #1 already. My TiVo has dual tuners so I can watch one channel and record another. If you don't have dual tuners, then you can record a channel and watch a pre-recorded show.
As to #3, I don't care to record HDTV, but I would like a HD decoder built in. Once I got my TiVo I've not turned on my Proscan HD decoder since. It just collects dust until something really good comes on in HD (like Band of Brothers).
M.B.
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!
You missed that the poster said he has cable, specifically digital cable. The dual tuner PVR is manufactured by and for DirecTV with TiVo Technology - it doesn't work with cable. Neither TiVo nor ReplayTV make a cable-compatible PVR with dual tuners.
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
...that are sitting on 100Mbit connection (hello student home, yes I mean you) and where most stuff is availible on the local network at blazing speeds. As far as I can tell, they basicly don't watch much TV at all. They're so used to having stuff on-demand they don't adapt to any schedule, and when they do find the time (no VCR/PVR since they watch so little TV) the ads bugs them. I think they and the TiVo users are pretty much the same group, ignoring certain legal differences.
Like most other things in life you grow used to it, like so many people have gotten used to banner ads. Like, I never felt my ISDN line was that "slow" until my friends got DSL (not in this street, thanks for nothing) and I got myself a laptop and hooked myself up to the Uni internet. Now this line feels like a stinking slow modem, barely good enough to reload slashdot, nevermind actually downloading Game demos/Legal music/Movie trailers/Linux Distros and whatever else I might like to get. Nevermind thinking of those pay-per-minute charges ticking, it wasn't that much an issue until everybody else started having 24/7 connections.
In short, once you've tasted something better you won't let go.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Personally, I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there." Why stop at a recordable DVD drive? I am holding out for an integrated Bluetooth connectivity, PS2, coffee-maker, GPS and magic 8-ball. I also want it to be solar powered and to be totally waterproof at depths of up to 5000 meters. It shoud also cost less than $20 and run Debian. These are the reasonable consumer demands of me, Joe Slashdot.
I finally got a TiVo earlier this year. I wish I would have bought one the day they hit $300/40 hrs. It's just great, plain and simple. Remember the first day you got broadband? How much better it was than dialing up? Even if you had a big pipe at work, how great it was to have an always-on super-fast connection at home? TiVo is like that. Even though you know the benefits--pause & rewind live TV, super-easy recording--you just don't know how good it is until you experience it first-hand. Just like sex--you can hear all about it, you can tell yourself, "Yup, I bet it'll be pretty good" and be right, but you just don't know how good until you do it. (Although, unlike sex, I can just about guarantee the first time with a TiVo will be great.) I don't know how else to describe it.
:-)
Fellow TiVo owners, mod me up so the nonbelievers can be enlightened.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This alternative allows saving to removable media- primarily CD-ROM.
EyeTV is a drive sized box that attaches to the USB port and either/both the cable wire or AV cables (DVD players, VCRs, DV cameras etc). It is also a software interface that is easy to use. It does the usual stuff like letting you watch live or recorded TV on your monitor in a window size you choose.
It can wake or turn on the computer for a timed recording. It can copy from cable and DVD, but not at full DVD quality. The two quality options are roughly equivalent to regular TV and VCR quality EyeTV can save programs on hard drive, or inexpensive video CDs (readable with DVD players, 70 minutes each), or QuickTime format for use anywhere.
It doesn't require a paid subscription, but a free web link allows convenient scheduling for most US and some Canadian users. I just do mine manually, which is quite easy and reliable.
EyeTV software has been frequently updated and improved. It is now possible to edit (remove commercials, etc) recordings within the program. Editing an hour of commercial television takes me about 5 minutes if I want to save it permanently. It's wonderful for taking clips from SNL or other variety programming which can then be forwarded to others or stored for future reference.
I've been using it all year and I'm beginning to trust it to work correctly. I set it to record and forget about it. Whether I'm using the computer or not, it quietly does its thing in the background.
My understanding is that this uses a standard chip set so that similar devices should be available to PC and 'nix users.
http://www.elgato.com/ about $200
...omphaloskepsis often...
I had my TiVo modded to add 2 120 gig HDs [can't go bigger because of a BIOS deal...] and have over 300 hours of viewing goodness. That's over 10 DAYS of programming. That's a lot of SpongeBob. If I wanted, there is an Ethernet add-in that ostensibly allows the"daily call" [for programming info] to be made over your broadband connection. It also allows you to telnet to the TiVo and take programs off the unit to your computer HD for transfer to CD or DVD. Pretty much they are MPEG files with additional info for the TiVo OS. Try Ninthtee for info.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Actually, TiVo already does that -- we use that feature quite often. Just set the "Keep Until" date to the "Keep Until I Delete" option (green-dot mode). That will make it record the shows, and since it won't erase them until you do it manually, it will stop recording any newer ones; it won't overwrite them. Works like a charm!
--Tom
While commercial skipping is far from the whole picture on a PVR, it alone can cause you to justify buying one of these things today, rather than waiting for any improvement in it.
Consider if you watch 1 hour of TV per day that you don't watch on videotape, which is quite low for the average viewer.
That means about 20 minutes saved per day. Or 10 hours a month. If you watch more TV, multiply it out.
How much do you value your time? You should value it as much as others will pay for it. Are you a $50/hour consultant? That's $500/month, enough to pay for itself in ONE MONTH. Are you a $6/hour burger flipper? Still a $47/month gain (after monthly fee.) and enough to pay for it in just a few months.
You are absolutely crazy to wait, and the commercial skipping is just one of the features you will want. Every month you don't buy it you are wasting money.
Of course you can videotape everything, and watch it at lower quality with incvonenience. But most don't. But with the Tivo you record everything, you almost never watch live. So it really makes this difference.
There is one caveat. When you first get it, you will watch more TV for a while. If you have discipline, you will bring it back down over time.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation