By Steve Fey

I wanted to wait to write about this subject until I could gather enough data to give an informed and rational review of our new TiVo DVR. Unfortunately, I need something for this week so I’m writing it now. If you don’t know what those initials (TiVo DVR) mean, then where in heck do you live, anyway? It isn’t the USA, I’ll tell you that. If you’re an American and don’t know, then you’re probably a communist, maybe even Sponge Bob. You oughta be ashamed!

But seriously, folks, my lovely wife asked for a TiVo for Christmas last year (which wasn’t all that long ago, actually.) So now we have one sitting near the TV, glaring at us. I have no idea what TiVo means, to tell you the truth. I think it’s one of those words marketing people make up, like Lexus or Twinkie. The things those words refer to can be a good thing (especially Twinkies™) but they really don’t mean anything. Another example of that sort of word is Greenland, by the way. Just thought I’d throw that in.

TiVo does the same thing a VCR does, of course. Only better, because it lets you zip right by the commercials during playback. You can even pause and replay a live program if you want to. Of course, there’s a two-second delay all the time, so nothing’s really ever live, but who really cares? Isn’t life all theater anyway? Didn’t Shakespeare say that? Well, he should have. Anyhow, the TiVo does all that and keeps track of your favorite programs so it can record every instance of Law and Order whether you’ve seen that episode six times or not. Well, not really because sometimes there are four episodes on at the same time, but the TiVo tries.

A TiVo isn’t just a recorder: it’s a computer. That means that you have an intelligent device in your house, watching everything you do with glowing little eyes, reporting on your activities to the super secret headquarters of a group so horrid that even the terrorists have grown to hate and fear them. That group, of course, is the marketing executives of the American entertainment industry. It’s true: they know when you are sleeping; they know when you’re awake; they don’t care if you’ve been bad or good so long as they get their take! And they’re watching you!

You do get some features you might like, of course. Besides recording programs, you can look at your digital photos using your television, and haven’t you always said you’d like to do that? You can listen to all that music you bootlegged before they cracked down through your surround sound, if you’ve got one, or through your TV if you’re crazy. And, they tell me that I can now save recorded programs to another computer and watch them whenever I want. I tried that, and the little window that popped up said that it would take ninety minutes to download one episode of Jeopardy. Huh. Thirty minute show, hour and a half to copy it. There’s got to be something wrong with that.

I’ll figure out just what that is as soon as I get done watching all my recordings of American Idol. Wouldn’t want to disappoint the marketeers, would we?