I have become a slave to my TiVo

Cafe Society
1

I thought this thing was supposed to make TV watching more efficient - cut out the crap, eliminate channel surfing, spin through the commercials - and allow me to lead an active, happy, lifestyle away from the tube. I was supposed to be able to watch whatever I wanted whenever it was convenient for me.

Not so. It seems to have had the opposite effect.

I pine away at work all day waiting until I can get home and see what **Mulva ** (yes, I’ve named my sweet little TiVo box) has in store for me this evening.

I blast through two episodes of Jeopardy! so that I can view today’s reruns of The Daily Show in time to catch tonight’s live broadcast of an episode of LOST / Survivor / CSI / Arrested Development / etc. (even though I’m TiVoing them anyway!!!)

I swear to BeJeezus I didn’t watch nearly as much TV before I got my TiVo. Maybe after all these years of having to settle for shwag TV I’ve found the primo shit.

Anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

Gotta run and watch last week’s episode of LOST again… Aaaagggghhhh!!!

2

Wait till the broadcasters start deleting content after X amount of time and see if you still love it then. Me, I’m glad I still have my VCR handy.

3

Heh. I’ve fallen in the same trap. I’d have plenty of time to catch up on my the recordings, if only I didn’t have to work. Or sleep. Oh well.

(Currently at 36% full and presently recording F1 practice)

4

It’s an addiction, I tell you. Soon you’ll have to buy a 2nd TiVo, and expand the capacity of the hard drives…

5

I think this is just one of the stages of Living with TiVo.

At the beginning, in the honeymoon phase, you’re just so excited to have it, everything is fresh and new and exciting.

Then it becomes a burden, and you feel like you have to watch everything you record because, goddamnit, it is quality television.

Eventually you learn to weed out the filler, to let stuff in syndication just overwrite the last episode before you get to it, and, yes, one day when you achieve TiVo Zen Mastery, you will be able to delete first-run programming without watching it.[sup]*[/sup]

[sup]*[/sup]Okay, that is a complete and total lie. No human being can do this.

6

I know the feeling.

I actually watch more TV now than I did before tivo, simply because I never miss stuff. Before tivo, if I missed something…big deal, it’s gone. Now, if I go out one evening or go away for the weekend, I’m greated with hours upon hours of stuff to watch. And if I put off watching it TOO long, the hourglasses start appearing, which is a warning of “watch me, or pay the price!”

Tivos are great when you first get them. I rent mine from the cable company, and their model (SA-8000) was really faulty in the beginning, so I went through 3 of them before I got one that consistantly worked, so I got to start over 3 times. However, once they start filling up, they’re never the same. I actually have stuff on mine from over a year ago which is there because I want to transfer them to DVD and just haven’t gotten around to it yet…that’s about 10 hours or so that I could be using for procrastinating my shows for a couple days.

Despite this, season pass is a great feature, especially for shows in reruns. I’ve managed to watch almost the entire series of Gilmore Girls, The Amazing Race, and BTVS, which air when I am either at work, or long asleep.

7

See, this is exactly why I can’t get it. I’m the kind of person who, instead of sleeping during a flight, will get three different movies going on at once, flipping between each, struggling to stay awake.

8

I agree, this is humanly impossible.

I did take ‘Reno 911’ off my Season Pass Manager though. It was tough, but it had to be done. One Season Pass down, only 23 more to go…

Baby steps.

9

TIVO has been a godsend to my tv watching lifestyle.
Just a few habits I’ve picked up since owning one:

-With the knowledge that 30 minute shows have 10 minutes worth of commercials and 60 minute shows have 20 minutes of commercials I now start watching shows 10-20 minutes after they start just so I can skip the commercials and see them uninterrupted. For example, while everyone starts watching LOST at 8 o’clock, I don’t start watching till 8:20. Then I get the entire show sans commercial breaks from 8:20 til 9:00.

-If I’m crunched for time on a Sunday but still want to see that NFL game I will set it to record and then tune in 2 hours late. I can watch the first 3 quarters extremely fast by using the 30-second jump button to skip commercials, time outs, and half time. There also seems to be a consistant 30 second span between the time a play ends and when they’re lined up in formation for the next play that I skip with the 30-second jump button. By the time I get to the end of the fourth quarter I’m watching it live with everyone else.

-The almighty PAUSE button! What would I do without it? It has probably prevented me from losing my temper more than any other invention. Wife needs attention elsewhere… PAUSE, dogs need to be let out before they explode…PAUSE, pesky neighbor pounding on front door to tell me he’s going out of town again…PAUSE, in-laws calling long distance to chat…PAUSE, telemarketers…PAUSE!

-Using recorded shows as filler. So there’s a good show on from 7-8 and another from 9-10. Used to sit for an hour channel surfing crap. Now I can watch 3 commercial free 20 minute episodes of whatever sitcom I want during that spare hour.

-The awesome 10-second rewind button. Perfect for that “What did he just say?”, “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”,“Oops, just missed the football score on ESPN scroll” moments. Sometimes I forget I don’t have this button for everything like my car radio. I catch myself wanting to rewind something I missed on news-sports radio.

I’ll never go back.

10

:smiley: We do the same thing! (Although it’s DVR and not TiVo.)

11

Yep, me too. I’ve noticed an actual episode of Jeopardy! is only about 18 minutes long once you snip out all the commercials. They must crank out a week’s worth of shows in a day.