diane waxes rhapsodic about a machine that does not love her back.
NPR is testing my love.
What Central American land deal, first agreed upon 22 years ago, has been at long last finalized?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
I don't usually do this, but I'm going to give you a commercial for a product I just love.
It's called TiVo. (The 30-hour one is currently unavailable. Be strong. Hold out for the 30-hour one. You'll fill it up.)
In 5 years, everyone's going to have a TiVo, or something like it. It's totally the best way to watch TV. It's not just like having a VCR on a hard disk, which is what I thought it was when Darin bought it.
Here's how we record Buffy:
- go to menu of available shows;
- choose Buffy;
- choose "season pass" (there's also the "record this viewing" option).
That's it. No hassling with times--if Buffy changes timeslot during the season, the TiVo just records it at the new time. If there's a special showing of Buffy during the week, the TiVo records it at the special time, without your having to have heard about it.
Or if there's a movie you want to watch:
- go to menu of available shows;
- choose the movie you want to watch.
The TiVo figures out when the movie's on and what channel it's on. The TiVo figures out if the movie conflicts with any of your season pass shows and asks you if you want that movie more than that upcoming episode of ER. The TiVo figures out if you've got enough space available to record the movie at the viewing quality (Best, Good, Okay) you choose.
And recently I asked Darin, "Is Wiseguy playing anywhere?" Because there were a few Kevin Spacey episodes that Greg did not manage to tape for me and I figured, you know, hey, it's not like I watch all that much TV, I can record a few more things.
Darin looked up Wiseguy in the menu, discovered it's on Court TV on Sunday afternoons--imagine paging through TV Guide looking for that info--and chose a season pass, so all the episodes will record. I just have to look at the little program description (did I mention most shows have a description attached, so you can tell if you've already seen that episode?) to decide if I want to watch it or not.
When you're just watching live TV, the TiVo keeps up to a half hour recorded (until you change channels). If you have to get a soda or something, you just hit "pause" and the show pauses. When you return, you hit play. Or, if you have enough of the show saved up, you can fast-forward over the commercials--I haven't seen a commercial in months. (And that half hour is always waiting for you--I just turned on the TiVo and discovered the last half hour of a really bad movie on Showtime is available for my perusal. So you can always catch up to the current time, if you've missed some of a show.)
One of the main differences between TiVo and its competitor Replay is how TiVo gives recommendations. You rate various shows with thumbs up or thumbs down---for example, Buffy gets 3 thumbs up, Friends gets 2 thumbs up, paid programming gets 3 thumbs down. Based on which shows you recommend highly, TiVo will record other shows for you. The way they do this is the TiVo box downloads information from the service, combines this with your local ratings of shows, and makes recommendations. You can view the recommendations or set it to tape them automatically using whatever space is available. (The TiVo box doesn't upload your ratings to the service, but a lot of people think it does or it could some day. I'm not really sweating over it.)
The Replay and the TiVo are similar in many ways but also have several differences (user interface, a few other features). Most of the people I know bought TiVo after comparing.
We're going to teach Bug very early the joys of fast-forwarding through commercials. (Yeah, I know, like that's going to save us from getting pestered to buy this, that, and the other.)
Absolutely true:
Darin was on the phone yesterday with John Sullivan, discussing a strange result John was getting with some of the routines in the application they were working on. After John ran it, the value of the language variable was en_us; after Darin ran it, the value of the language variable was c.
"So your language is English, whereas mine is C," Darin mused.
At which point I had to yell (from the bedroom), "I always suspected!"
Darin cracked up.
I am mostly ready for Christmas. With most people, I insist that Christmas is good through the Feast of the Epiphany, so they have time to get word to me what they didn't get on the 25th, and I can take advantage of the post-holiday sales. (I am both sneaky and cheap.)
I have nothing for my sister and my brother-in-law. I have plenty for their bouncing bundle of joy. Nothing for them. I must have something in hand by the 24th.
I wonder if they'd accept gift certificates to the baby section at Target.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com