What TV show do you think is particularly suited to TiVo?
I nominate House Hunters on HGTV. (I don’t know why it’s even on, but it lets me inside other people’s houses without being arrested.)
The show is 90% filler, and some of the filler is even repeated after the commercial breaks.
I don’t need to know why these people are house hunting. I don’t need to meet their real estate agent and watch him or her pull out file drawers and talk on the phone. I don’t need to watch them fill out their offer and wait by the phone for the phony phone call telling them their offer was accepted.
Just show me the three houses or condos they’re looking at, and let me see what they did to the property after they bought it.
That takes about 8 minutes. Is there another show that’s more perfect for TiVo?
Football? The NFL Network cuts a three-hour game in half by getting rid of most of the commericals. I can cut the game to about 15 minutes with 30-second skips from play to play except when I want to see a replay or something. (Replays not guaranteed with Monday Night Football.)
That’s if I have to tape the game and then really want to watch it, though.
The Today Show. They have some semi-interesting segments, at least food for thought if nothing else. But it’s basically 2 hours 40 minutes of crap and 20 minutes of good stuff. And they keep teasing you with the good segments from the beginning of the show, and those segments often don’t actually play until an hour or two into the show.
Dancing With The Stars. Especially the bloated results show. The regular episode plus the results the next night fill 2.5 hours of ABC airtime together. We blow through both episodes in about an hour with the ol’ DVR.
And for a show that’s improved the other way (by watching things again), how about The Office? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back because I missed a funny line the first time (usually due to reaction to the line before it).
But especially… Iron Chef (lots of filler up front, and recap after every commercial break…) Survivor (skip the recap, and my wife likes to know who got booted first, so she jumps to the end on mute while I look away, then jumps back to watch.) Antiques Roadshow We play a “guess the value” game by pausing just before the reveal.
Talk shows, like Oprah, Ellen, Conan, Ferguson, etc.
If I dislike someone’s particular monologues, I can fast forward the first 20 minutes or so. I can also head straight to a particular guest or band that I like instead.
The Super Bowl took barely 2 hours to watch on Tivo, less than most movies, and was more interesting and exciting as a result. The artificial suspense of all of the play stoppages and commercials is just that, purely artificial.
Any show that starts with commercial–title theme–more commercials–actual show. Many shows don’t even begin until 10 minutes past, it is nice skipping all of the intro filler.
The Olympics were great with Tivo. Major network coverage is 90% filler, montages, retrospectives, and announcers, with about 10% of actual competition footage. 6 hours of coverage take barely an hour to watch all of the events.
I haven’t watched any of the episodes from this season, but last year I used to watch Deal or No Deal. DVR it, skip the commercials, put the “suspenseful” choosing of the suitcases on 2x FF, and you can watch the entire hour’s show in about 20 minutes.
It was a good way to watch what’s basically a pretty stupid TV show with absolutely stupid contestants without making me feel guilty about how much time I actually wasted on the thing.
In addition to **DWTS ** and **Survivor ** listed above, I add Jericho. We pause about every 5 minutes, with DeHusband arguing about the emergency preparedness and me arguing the “science”. Then we fast forward through the soap-opery bits (basically whenever Mom or the blond chick are on screen). Takes about 1.25 hours to watch a 0.75 hour show.
SNL. You can tape the show and see the one or two decent sketches, watch the news and completely forget the rest. And you will be able to talk about it at the water cooler on Monday.
Like the OP…Curb Appeal on HGTV. It’s a show where they spruce up the outsides of houses. I like to dabble with the way the outside of my house looks, but 90% of the homes on the show do NOT look anything like mine. So I’ll watch the beginning to get a gist of the “before” and then ffwd to the end to see the results. There is a LOT of filler on that show as well.
I going to nominate Mythbusters. There’s a lot of filler material, and they tend to repeat themselves a lot (especially after commercials). With a DVR, it’s much, much better.
By the way, for anyone who’s not aware, to enable the 30-second skip button on Tivo, WHILE PLAYING BACK A RECORDED SHOW, press Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select.
Then your “skip forward” button or whatever it’s called will skip exactly 30 seconds ahead each time you press it. Very very useful.
You’ll have to do this again if your power goes off and/or your Tivo reboots.
I love watching the wrestling shows on my TiVo. Any of the low-end matches I have no interest in I can FF thru, as well as some of the promos that don’t mean anything. I can blow thru a normal 2 hr 10 min Monday Night Raw in about an hour, maybe 1:15…
I hadn’t thought of doing that with Deal or No Deal, but it seems like a great idea… that show is so slow…
Baseball games. I’ll have the TiVo on 1xFF during the pitches, and then if the batter makes contact I hit Play to watch the play develop. Then when a new better comes on, back to FF.
NASCAR. As I don’t care to plan my day around the race schedule, it lets me watch it when I’m ready. And since 25-30 % (varies by week) is commercials, I can skip those too.
Generally, my TV watching has improved with my DVR. Now I dont’ have to get frustrated at the wife when she starts talking just as they come out of commercial… I can hit pause.
We frequently acknowledge around our house that TiVo saved our marriage for this very reason. I can also participate in the kiddies’ bedtime ritual without missing Prison Break.
The only show I really watch is Battlestar Galactica, and recently I’ve reviewed the miniseries, first, and second seasons on DVD. Now that I’m back to watching new episodes on broadcast TV, this I know: I would make me very happy if I never had to watch another television commercial in my life. I don’t think there’s a show on TV that I would want to watch that couldn’t be improved vastly through the use of DVR technology. The trouble is I only watch one show, so I can’t yet justify renting or purchasing the box. But damn, I hate commercials now.
So far, every show I watch is better because of DVR. I don’t have to watch the f-ing commercials anymore.
Noteable improvement goes to American Idol, skip all the crap and listen to the singing, then FFWD the whole results show to the end.
The complex shows are better because I can pause and rewind!
Hockey is better too. I start watching about 45 minutes into the game, FFWD through all the commercials, and the intermissions, and catch up to live TV just as the game ends. On a really busy night, I might watch the entire game on 4X speed and just stop and replay the goals.
Just the whole idea of watching what I want, when I want to made me fork out the cash, and I am so glad I did. I’m no longer a slave to my TV set.
