My name is Undertoad...and I'm a TiVoholic...
 

When I saw this story, I immediately thought of UT. Do you (or any other TiVo users) face this problem?

I didn't read it, but let me just say, my DirecTiVo rules all over creation. Jesus this thing is awesome.

It's not a problem At All! I find that, post-TiVo, I watch LESS TV than I did before.

Because when you're not stuck to their stupid schedule, and there's no chance of MISSING a show, you watch only because you think something will be entertaining enough for you to watch it, not because you think you'll be MISSING something.

As a result, I find that I always have something better to do, and even though I've upgraded my TiVo to 120 hours, I have things being deleted automatically all the time.

And it's fun to retrain your TiVo after one of its viewers leaves. I have worn out the thumbs-down key on Trading Spaces and The Dating Show and The Bachelor and Queer Eye. De-pussifying the damn thing, really, to bring another thread into this.

Outside of the "no piles of tapes" factor (okay, and the two channels at one time factor) I don't see much difference between the whole TiVo experience and VCR "timeshifting".

This does, though, remind me of my friend's schizophrenic (now ex) wife. She was addicted to television ... not only would she be watching tv (on the 2001 sized monolith in the living room) but there were three or four vcrs in the house taping different channels, pretty much 24 hours/day. It got worse when they got cable. If a tape switch (to keep episodes of a series from mixing with episodes of another series) was necessary, she'd refuse to leave the house until it was accomplished.

The difficulty was scheduling time to actually WATCH some of these tapes ... the living room had a pile of several hundred videotapes (all placed in those plastic rental boxes and carefully labelled and sorted by content). She casually remarked one day that she and hubby had gotten through about 1/3 of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (this was during season 5 or 6).

The divorce papers were filed not too long thereafter. My friend at this point does not and probably will never again own a "television machine." He occasionally, I understand, will watch DVDs on his laptop.

Say you want to record every new episode of Punk'd, plus all reruns that you *haven't* already recorded.

In TiVo, you select Punk'd from the schedule, hit the "Record" button, select "Season Pass", and then select the appropriate option. Total time invested, probably 15 seconds.

When you want to watch said show, you don't need to find the right tape, rewind, or any of that. You hit the List button, scroll to the appropriate show, and play it.

When commercials come on, you hit the Skip Ahead 30 Seconds At A Time button until you're through the commercials; if you accidentally go too far, you hit the Skip Back 8 Seconds button until you're in the clear. If you go way too far, you hit the rewind button, of course.

When you're done, you can delete the recording or choose to save it. You don't have to worry about labeling tapes (all that's done for you) or wearing them out ('cause it's a freaking hard drive). It's alllll good.

To do the same thing with a VCR, you would have to manually scan TV listings, and set an individual record time for each and every episode you wanted to record. Then, you'd have to make sure you had enough tape space to record said shows. If you didn't, you'd need to be around to swap out tapes.

When you want to watch, you need to find the appropriate tape, rewind it if (or you did this before - either way, time was wasted doing it), hit play, and find the appropriate spot in the tape for your show.

When commercials come on, you have to fast forward through them manually, not 30 seconds at a time. I get through a typical commercial break in probably ten seconds. How long will it take to fast forward those five to seven minutes? Probably one to two minutes.

When it's done, you've got a junky tape laying around and taking up space. Wee!

Plus, another huge benefit of TiVo is that you can <b>pause live TV</b>. You're watching the Daily Show, the phone rings. Pause, answer. Finish conversation, unpause. Pause it in the middle of the joke? Skip back 8 seconds.

Or you can rewind live TV as well. What did Bam's grandmother say? Skip back 8 seconds. Hmmm, still can't tell... something about MTV movie... skip back 8 seconds... "Put that in your MTV movie". Ah.

Trust me, if you had it, you would quickly think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's 'cause it is. It gives you control of your TV back.

(I can record two channels simultaneously while watching a prerecorded show without a hiccup. Try that with your VCR!)

[ Edit - I need to get a new freaking keyboard. I had to type "cause" about eight times, and I still wound up with "casue". Jesus Christ. Keys are starting to die like every other day. ]

But only the DirecTivo can do that particular trick... all other Tivos only have one tuner.

(We have the Hughes/RCA box. It's pretty freaking studly. DirecTV + TiVo == awesome.)

Former TiVo addict
 

I have had my TiVo for about 4 years. And there was a point where I was trying to play catch-up with the shows that it recorded. I eventually found that I couldn't do so and still have a life AND pay enough attention to my daughter so the end result it has actually REDUCED the number of shows that I "follow" religiously.

I guess that originally, I saw it as a way to "not miss ANY episodes" and getting that made it clear to me what a TRAP it was. Now I just use it as a way to be sure that something I like is always "on".

We have a DirecTivo which came with a 40GB drive, and I added a 120GB to it. I forget how much time this gives us but it's a lot.

Believe it or not, there are rarely more than 2 or 3 shows that don't have the yellow or green bullet beside them. Most of the space is green-lighted stuff (this means thatTivo will not delete it no matter how old it gets) that Mrs. Dallas hasn't gotten around to watching yet. The rest is kiddie shows. I deleted all my recorded programs and wish lists a while back in a fit of pique and found out I didn't miss them. Now I'm mostly on DVDs, of which I have a backlog. (Right now I need to re-watch Fellowship of the Ring, in preparation for the Two Towers Extended Edition release next week.)

There's just not that much on I'm interested in. NOTHING on the networks. Daria is gone (except chopped up versions on Noggin). Taildaters used to be a guilty pleasure, but it's gone. I used to check out documentaries on ancient Egypt or on Astronomy, but they mostly make me snooze now.

Too true !!!
When we first got out TIVO a few years ago the Olympics were on , my wife said i was sick because i was sitting there rewinding and slow-moing a figuer skater falling . It was GREAT , you could see them smiling as they went into a spin , then their expresion changes to horror as they Fuck up , then fall in slow-mo , their butt expanding and contracting as it hit the ice !!!
Sick i know but funny as well !!
And yes it was a female figuer skater .

Well ditching cable for direct tv was a great move for us, the Tivo is now very very appealing and will not interfere, but even enhance the magic of NHL Center ice. Cool. I'll hafta check the $.

Well be sure to get the TiVo unit that's actually a part of DirecTV, is what we're all kinda saying.

If it's this one:

http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/TIVO.dsp

...it's only $99 for a 35-hour version. Go for it!

Now if you'd just fix those listening habits of yours...

("Trading Spaces" and "Queer Eye" are alright...we watch them occasionally.)

And if you can add or replace a hard drive in a desktop computer, you can add one to the Tivo. Unless the new models are different, they come with one empty drive bay so it's easy to just pop an extra one in alongside the factory-installed one. You have to do a custom partition on it but it's worth a little kludging for the extra space.

Trading Spaces (which I only watched while at my sister's house when she had the remote control) is amusing only when the folks get home and either retch or cry when they see what's been done to their beloved credenza.

Queer Eye ... I had great hopes for this. Should have been over the top funny. Instead I think it's set queer-straight relations back 50 years or so.