Are the Tivo watching habits really worth anything. Right now, as I sit here at work typing this message, my Tivo is on. It has no idea if the power to the TV is on or off though. It THINKS the digital cable box is on channel X, but I could have turned it or the TV off, or changed the digital box with a different remote. Does Tivo try to guess if I'm really watching the show on channel X right now by seeing how long it's been since I changed the channel/paused/used rewind/etc? I'm sure there are times when I spend several hours on a single channel and don't press any Tivo remote buttons.
If you're spending several hours on one channel actively watching and you don't press a single TiVo remote button, then your TiVo certainly isn't doing you much good. All of the advantages of having TiVo over just watching bare TV are in what you do with that remote. Unless there's some sort of marathon on, my TiVo rarely goes more than a few hours without changing the channel to record something; if I were actively watching the live TV during that time, I would at least have to use the remote to tell TiVo not to change the channel.
When recording viewing habits, all TiVo knows is what you do through its interface or its remote. Which represents all the TV viewing for 99.9% of the TiVo users out there who actually use it.
By Academy rules, the Visual Effects Award Committee is permitted to qualify a maximum of seven films for nomination. And looking over the list of films selected, I can't honestly say that either Matrix sequel deserves to replace any of the films on that list. Possibly Matrix Reloaded instead of The Hulk, but that's just because I think the actual Hulk effect looked really fake.
This may be a case where the rule needs to be changed. As more and more big-budget films heavy on the FX are released, the existing limit of seven contenders may no longer be adequate.
This is exactly what my employer did. Just over a year ago, they switched from a 3270-based front-end to a NT4-based system, still accessing the same mainframe servers on the back end.
Aside from the learning curve associated with the switch, and the loss of years of muscle memory, the company spent an obscene amount of money replacing the terminals with workstations, redesigning the physical layout of the work area, and developing the GUI.
And you know what? We're not one iota more efficient than we were before the switch. And our IT guys are out on the work floor MUCH more often.
(Before the switch, you basically only saw the IT guys out on the floor when someone's terminal died (about once every couple of weeks). Now, they have to come out several times a day to reset workstations, fix login problems, and do other NT-specific junk that was totally unnecessary with the terminals.)
But the funniest thing is that the GUI app only replicates some of the functions. So we still have to access the 3270 screens through terminal emulation to get all the functions done. So much for innovation.
Anecdotally, I've found that Firefly suffered from an increasing apathy among the more sophisticated viewers.
One of my co-workers is as big a fan of good SF and fantasy TV as I am. But he refused to watch a single episode of Firefly. Why? He was certain, before it ever aired, that it would die early, and he didn't want to get into another show that was going to die midstream.
Let's face it: we have passed the point when any truly original show is going to get a decent chance to attract viewers. If it's not a hit right out of the gate, it's not going to last. (I'm honestly surprised that Andromeda hasn't been canceled yet.) Long-running genre shows like X-Files, Buffy, and B5 would not, if they premiered today, last more than a season. None of them were ratings giants at the very start.
Every single new series that I started watching at the beginning of this season, with one exception, has either been canceled by its network or given up on by me (which usually has preceded cancellation by a very short period). Most were both canceled and given up on. I fully expect two more of my current shows to end after this season (Buffy and Charmed).
I find my TiVo increasingly filled with non-fiction (mostly History Channel and Discovery Multichannel stuff) and reruns of older stuff I love (like Sci-Fi Channel's umpteen-times-a-day Twilight Zone reruns), and less and less new fiction worth watching. The last time I had to clear out my TiVo for anything was for Taken, and while I greatly enjoyed it, I'm not sure it was worth 20 viewing hours. I'm spending less and less time watching TiVo and more and more watching my growing collection of DVDs.
I still have hope that television can recover from its great creeping miasma, but that hope is waning fast.
Anecdotally, it would seem that the more technical folks might actually be at a disadvantage in learning to use TiVo.
After being happy TiVo owners for several months (we bought ours over two years ago), we bought my parents one for Christmas, including a year's service (TiVo was still selling annual service at that time). My father, the self-proclaimed techie (who still needs my help to figure out everything in his A/V setup), overthinks it and gets confused going through the menus. My mother, who is the first to admit that she's not technical at all, got the hang of it quickly. Within a week of setting it up, it was full of my mom's favorite shows...and none of my father's.
He still is reluctant to use it long enough to get "into" it, because it doesn't work the way he thinks it ought. (His current complaint? He watches live TV with it and changes channels with the cable remote, and doesn't like the delay that introduces in the channel change. (sigh))
Sci-Fi Channel currently owns all US airing rights to Farscape. They will have to relinquish these if Henson is to have any hope of selling the show to another network.
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When recording viewing habits, all TiVo knows is what you do through its interface or its remote. Which represents all the TV viewing for 99.9% of the TiVo users out there who actually use it.
This may be a case where the rule needs to be changed. As more and more big-budget films heavy on the FX are released, the existing limit of seven contenders may no longer be adequate.
This is exactly what my employer did. Just over a year ago, they switched from a 3270-based front-end to a NT4-based system, still accessing the same mainframe servers on the back end.
Aside from the learning curve associated with the switch, and the loss of years of muscle memory, the company spent an obscene amount of money replacing the terminals with workstations, redesigning the physical layout of the work area, and developing the GUI.
And you know what? We're not one iota more efficient than we were before the switch. And our IT guys are out on the work floor MUCH more often.
(Before the switch, you basically only saw the IT guys out on the floor when someone's terminal died (about once every couple of weeks). Now, they have to come out several times a day to reset workstations, fix login problems, and do other NT-specific junk that was totally unnecessary with the terminals.)
But the funniest thing is that the GUI app only replicates some of the functions. So we still have to access the 3270 screens through terminal emulation to get all the functions done. So much for innovation.
Anecdotally, I've found that Firefly suffered from an increasing apathy among the more sophisticated viewers.
One of my co-workers is as big a fan of good SF and fantasy TV as I am. But he refused to watch a single episode of Firefly. Why? He was certain, before it ever aired, that it would die early, and he didn't want to get into another show that was going to die midstream.
Let's face it: we have passed the point when any truly original show is going to get a decent chance to attract viewers. If it's not a hit right out of the gate, it's not going to last. (I'm honestly surprised that Andromeda hasn't been canceled yet.) Long-running genre shows like X-Files, Buffy, and B5 would not, if they premiered today, last more than a season. None of them were ratings giants at the very start.
Every single new series that I started watching at the beginning of this season, with one exception, has either been canceled by its network or given up on by me (which usually has preceded cancellation by a very short period). Most were both canceled and given up on. I fully expect two more of my current shows to end after this season (Buffy and Charmed).
I find my TiVo increasingly filled with non-fiction (mostly History Channel and Discovery Multichannel stuff) and reruns of older stuff I love (like Sci-Fi Channel's umpteen-times-a-day Twilight Zone reruns), and less and less new fiction worth watching. The last time I had to clear out my TiVo for anything was for Taken, and while I greatly enjoyed it, I'm not sure it was worth 20 viewing hours. I'm spending less and less time watching TiVo and more and more watching my growing collection of DVDs.
I still have hope that television can recover from its great creeping miasma, but that hope is waning fast.
Anecdotally, it would seem that the more technical folks might actually be at a disadvantage in learning to use TiVo.
After being happy TiVo owners for several months (we bought ours over two years ago), we bought my parents one for Christmas, including a year's service (TiVo was still selling annual service at that time). My father, the self-proclaimed techie (who still needs my help to figure out everything in his A/V setup), overthinks it and gets confused going through the menus. My mother, who is the first to admit that she's not technical at all, got the hang of it quickly. Within a week of setting it up, it was full of my mom's favorite shows...and none of my father's.
He still is reluctant to use it long enough to get "into" it, because it doesn't work the way he thinks it ought. (His current complaint? He watches live TV with it and changes channels with the cable remote, and doesn't like the delay that introduces in the channel change. (sigh))
Sci-Fi Channel currently owns all US airing rights to Farscape. They will have to relinquish these if Henson is to have any hope of selling the show to another network.