I Want My TIVOMike Rappaport

Occasionally, I bump into people who tell me they don’t own a TV.  Most of the time one gets the impression that they think you are supposed to be impressed by this — it shows how cultural or high minded they are.  Well, there is plenty of high minded stuff on TV and if you want to impress me do so positively, by how much you know, not by what you don’t do.

Still, there are better and worse ways to watch TV.  Recently, I found out how important a TIVO (or in my case a DVR) is to making use of the TV.  It is at least as important an innovation as was the remote control, and that is saying something.

My TV with the DVR broke and so I was forced to watch TV without the DVR.  It is enough to give up TV (just kidding).  But it really did suck.  The following features of the DVR seem essential: 

(1) Being able to stop a live TV show at will (or to rewind it).  Phone calls, interruptions, whatever — they are no problem.

(2) Being able to fast forward through commercials.  Some shows  have an incredible number of commercials and it is ridiculous to have to sit through them — or risk missing part of the show.  No problem with the DVR.

(3) Being able to record any show with the slightest of ease and then to play it back, again, with the slightest of ease.  You never have to watch anything you don’t really want to watch.  If you have a long list of shows recorded, as I do, you rarely get to most of them. 

In fact, the DVR playback is so good that I record movies which I own on DVD.  Playing a DVD is a pain.  You have to get up, put the DVD in, then wait for a while until the menu loads, and then sometimes deal with commercials.   I predict that as DVRs become more popular, DVDs will become more efficient, eliminating some of these annoying aspects.

So, if you don’t have a DVR, buy one.  You’ll never go back.