Does anyone else suffer from DVR-itis?

Cafe Society
1

For lack of a better word. There are shows you like, and thanks to modern technology you can record them and watch them later.

You really do intend on watching them.

I’m probably like, 50 episodes behind on the Daily Show. I regularly have to delete the oldest ones because I’m never going to get to them.

CSI & Without a Trace I’ve pretty much given up on. Want to watch them, but haven’t watched a single episode since sometime last season.

24, haven’t watched a single episode all season.

Desperate Housewives, I think I left off somewhere around episode 4 or 5.

Invasion I fell way behind, then marathon watched all the way up to the mid-season break, and have since fallen behind again.

Survivor I fell way behind, then got caught up, but am now an episode behind.

Amazing Race, I watched the first two or three eps, the rest are still waiting for me.

Alias, haven’t watched anything but maybe the season premier.

NCIS, probably at least 5-10 episodes behind.

The new Dr. Who, I’ve watched the first two.

John Doe, haven’t watched any yet.

Lost, I think I’ve seen half the season.

Charmed & Smallville, I’m pretty much caught up.

Well at least I’ll have stuff to catch up on over the summer, assuming I do. But now the 4400 is starting on June 11th!

Anyone else have this affliction. Must we form a support group of some kind? You know, I still have some video games I haven’t finished. Colossus, Kingdom Hearts II, etc.

2

Absolutely. I have maybe 30 episodes of Futurama, The Simpsons and Frasier that have been lying around on my DVR’s hard disk for months. Catching up on the permanent backlog has actually become a chore.

I have come to think of the DVR as a machine that allows me to easily store TV programmes, thereby sparing me the tedious and time-consuming business of actually watching them.

3

Since I record mostly HD programming, my DVR won’t hold very many shows (only about twelve hours’ worth). I end up offloading a lot of stuff onto VHS tape to make room for new recordings. When there’s a scarcity of fresh programs in the summertime, the tapes will come in handy. Even if the taped shows aren’t in HD, at least they are in 16x9 format.

4

It’s absolutely a real phenomenon, and I don’t even have a DVR.* It’s the exact same feeling you get when a song comes on the radio that you have on CD. Even if that CD is in your stereo at the time, it is more appealing to listen to it on the radio than it is to listen to it via CD.

Or when you flip channels and run across a movie that you own on DVD. You’ll be far more likely to watch it “live” than you would be to pop in the DVD. This is true even if it’s edited for content, polluted with commercials, and butchered with pan & scan.

The reason is fairly obvious; when you watch something on broadcast air, (or cable,) hundres of thousands – if not millions – of other people are doing the same thing as you at that same time. It’s a shared experience by proxy. But listening to a CD, or watching a DVD, tape or DVR is a completely isolated experience. Only you are doing it at that exact time.

This has actually become a bit of a bummer for me in regards to NFL games. I have three close friends who are big football fans. For years, if a big play or controversial call happened in a Giants game, my phone would ring immediately. And if a similar play happened in a Jets game, I’d be dialing the phone without hesitation.

Alas, they’ve gotten DVRs. (Which are particularly awesome for commercial-laden sporting events like the NFL.) Now, none of us can call the others during games, as even a ringing phone is a big spoiler, what with caller ID.

My solution has been that if anything on tape lasts more than a week, I give up on it. I try to watch everything no later than 24 hours after broadcast.

*I use my VCR as they were intended, using all the timers and filling up tapes a week at a time. Even better, my 10 year old VCR stopped being able to record, so I picked up a $40 replacement and hooked it up ahead of the old one. Now I can watch tapes on the old one while recording on the new one. Call it a Flintstones DVR.

5

I don’t have a DVR, but I’ve never known anyone with a DVR that was inflamed. :wink:

FWIW, in my first semester of college there was a guy in the next dorm with a DVR who was always recording funny shows and actually showing them to people later when there was nothing on and we were all tired of Halo. For all I know he had hundreds of shows recorded that we didn’t watch, though.

6

Heh. Me too. I set up season passes for about 30 shows and watch maybe 2 of them. Mostly now I use it for movies on TCM that are scheduled for the wee hours, and for recording favorites from the commercial channels, so I can zap the ads.

Does everybody else’s DVR automatically record Friends? What’s up with that? I’ve never watched that show. Why does TiVo think I want it?

7

Except for Lost, I don’t do that. I usually watch what I have on my DVR within a couple days. I did put Invasion and Conviction on my timer list, but when several weeks went by without being interested enough to watch them, I deleted them all and removed it from my queue. For whatever reason, I got behind/lost interest in Lost, and haven’t caught up. But I know I’ll watch them eventually, so I haven’t deleted them.

What is taking up space on my HD are movies. Movies I’ve watched, but may want to see again. Like Pat & MIke, or Pride of the Yankees. I know I love these movies, so I hate deleting them. I can put them on DVDs, but I haven’t. The problem will be if I have a drive failure, then all is lost.

StG

8

Does one have to be a techie to figure out how to do that? I’ve googled around a bit, but haven’t been able to find anything that I can understand, about how to set it up, and what kind of equipment is needed.

9

I don’t know about getting it from your DVR to a computer, but it should be fairly simple if you have a DVD-writer drive and DVD writing software, and it shouldn’t even be that tough to make some menus and things. I’ve never done it, but I had a lot of classmates in a video production class who did.

10

Pam - I bought a DVD recorder, and just hooked them up according to the instructions. The nice thing about recording on the DVR first is I can edit out the commercials on broadcast TV when I put them on DVDS. The DVD recorder wasn’t very expensive.

StG

11

You can buy a TV DVD recorder and it works pretty much like a VCR. You just hit “play” and then record stuff to DVD instead of VHS tape.

A DVD recorder for your computer is different. You have to be able to transfer the shows from your DVR’s hard drive to your computer’s hard drive, and then author your own DVDs. Some systems are enabling you to do that easily, but it doesn’t seem really wide spread yet.

12

Thanks! I’d be wanting to transfer from the DVR to a DVD, not the PC, so I’ll look into a DVD recorder. And get a grandkid to do it for me. :slight_smile:

13

Wow, I always thought I was the only one who does this all the time! There are a couple of favorite movies I’ve purchased on DVD and have never even watched, yet, when they show up on TV, edited and with commercials, I still stop everything and watch. I am a sick, sick man.

Thankfully I don’t have a DVR, so I haven’t gotten into the same situation I have with the 80+ VCR tapes I have full of programs I’ve never watched from the 1980’s, if I had to guess. I guess if I’m ever asked to contribute to a time capsule, that would be mine :wink:

14

I have an extreme form of the same problem.

If for some reason you want to emulate this horror, start here. Note that I advocate nothing illegal. I’m on the far side of the bell curve, but I believe I’m engaging in “Fair Use” (especially since I never redistribute, rebroadcast or even watch anything I record).

15

My problem is compounded because I am a TV Archiver – or nowadays, a DVR-kiver. :slight_smile: It’s rare that I’ll watch something just for the sake of watching it; I’ve always gotta make a copy, to watch it again later. Plus, I’m extremely obsessive about removing commercials from broadcast TV shows.

Back in the VHS days, it was easy. Every show was “live”, so you only had one shot at getting it recorded right. So if I missed five seconds here or there, I could live with it. (Big cock-ups like missing thirty seconds after returning from the commercial, well, I’d have no choice but to wait for a repeat.) Now, with the advent of DVR + DVD Recorder, I’m able to make perfect recordings, with seamless commercial breaks. The trick is, I can’t always get it right on the first try. A 1-hour episode of Mythbusters may take 2 or 3 attempts to get right, not to mention the extra time spent adding thumbnails, episode description, and finalizing the DVD itself. So, we’re talking 2-3 hours of work to record each hour of programming.

Therefore, my DVR tends to get really packed at times, and every so often I’ve got to clear my schedule for a weekend, hunker down and get it done, or else start deleting shows and giving up on collections. Luckily, I’ve managed to whittle down the number of “must have” shows to a manageable few:

Iron Chef – With five episodes a night (and over 300 total) this show used to dominate my life. Then it went on hiatus for two months, and now it’s only shown once a week. Thank God for that, I was going crazy keeping up!

Amazing Race – Weekly show, easy to record since the commercial breaks are “fat” (2-3 seconds of black between the act break and commercial) so generally each show takes only one attempt to record. I throw in the Early Show interviews for good measure. :smiley:

The Sopranos – Easy, no commercials. Since season six will come out on DVD eventually, I don’t even bother making thumbnails – these are “temp” DVDs.

Mythbusters – Tricky show to record, and often plagued with the “Fuck You Edit” – that is, when I hit Pause, my DVD Recorder says “Fuck You! I’m gonna record the first 2 seconds of the commercial anyway!” :smack: Thankfully, I’ve caught up on all the previous episodes, and new ones are rare.

Modern Marvels – OH DEAR GOD. With over 500 episodes, I’m really limiting myself to just the favorites – bridges, skyscrapers, highways. Even so, this show fills up my DVR more than any other right now! If I’m not careful, this could really become a monster!

Outward Bound – This show got taken off the air before I had a chance to record it, though I did capture the Colorado series, plus its bastard spinoff “Sail Away”. (Naturally, DVR impact is minimal, since it’s not on TV anymore!)

General, Miscellaneous Programs – I’ve learned a secret…if you don’t check the program listings for Discovery, History Channel, Science Channel, etc. you’ll never know what you missed. Sometimes, though, I get sucked in and wind up with a DVR packed with “The Louisiana Purchase”, “When Yellowstone Erupts”, “Lion Battlefield” (plus its sequels, Wolf/Shark/Polar Bear Battlefields), “Bible Battles”, “The Pornographic Temples of India”, etc. etc. I’ve actually deleted more of these shows than I’ve watched, let alone recorded. Just last weekend, I got hit with a bunch of MSNBC Specials about homeless families & the evil acts of CPS. Still haven’t found time to archive them…

I wonder if there’s a support group for this? :wink:

16

I’ve got this problem - compounded by silly flaws in the PVR’s user interface design. For example, I record ‘The Daily Show’ and “The Colbert Report”. But the station that airs them put them on FIVE times a day each. The PVR has the ability to filter a recording by channel, or by ‘new’ or ‘repeat’, but it can do nothing about the same show being aired multiple times on the same channel. So if I don’t watch TV for a few days, I’ll have like 20 copies of those shows on the drive, and I have to spend 15 minutes deleting them. And yeah, sometimes I’ll stack up a weeks’ worth of them becausde I haven’t gotten around to watching them, and eventually just wind up deleting them anyway because they are taking up too much drive/menu space.

I have the same problem with The Simpsons. It’s aired like 20 times a day on various channels. I solved that problem by using a setting that allows you to say, “only record X copies of this show”. But that means when the new one comes on Sunday night, it gets erased within half a day if I don’t jump on there and mark it to be saved until I delete.

I think the designers of the PVR software never actually tried to use it or something. There are a couple of very, very simple tweaks that could be done to the feature set to make it much more usable, but which weren’t done.

17

Yeah, The Daily Show, Colbert, South Park, a lot of that stuff on Comedy Channel is a real bitch to record. With South Park, I know when the weekly new episode is supposed to air, so I just set a weekly timer.

For The Daily Show, I never could figure out when the official new episode was supposed to air, so I just set up a M-F timer to record it each morning at 7AM. That way, I only get five episodes recorded/week. Some of them are repeats though. It doesn’t take long for me to have 20 episodes I have to go through, delete the repeats, and try to watch the new ones. What happens though, is after a month, I have to just delete the oldest ten shows, because my DVR is full, and now it’s automatically deleting old stuff. No! It just deleted episode eight of Prison Break! But I was only up to episode seven!!!

18

There should be a SDMB award for rare situations, such as this one, where “-itis” is added to a word to form a cutsey neologism that actually respects the meaning of the suffix.

19

You know it’s bad when you secretly hope you’ll get mono and be forced to stay home and watch TV…

20

I don’t have a DVR: so far I have managed to stay strong in the face of TiVo’s wiles, and threads like this help me remember why. :wink:

I tend to get annoyed with the broadcast version and just put in the DVD – which I fast-forward to the last part I saw “live.” :slight_smile:

Interesting theory! I’ve always thought it’s because of the randomness: you get happier about hearing a favorite song on the radio because it wasn’t planned. Accidentally coming across something you like can be more pleasurable than listening to/watching it deliberately.