Forget all you think you know about watching television. Throw out the concepts of channels and lineups. VCR+ codes, your daily paper's TV listings, even the ubiquitous TV Guide need not apply. Primetime is a ghost of television's past.
Secede from the tyranny of the TV grid. Gone are the Sunday evenings scouring program listings, mapping out the viewing week ahead. An end to nightly feats of conflict resolution, balancing sitcoms and series against football games and specials. A mind free of cryptic codes, formerly the only way of distinguishing between new and repeat, original and syndicated. No worries about that show you forgot to record; chances are your recorder didn't. No longer do your viewing habits dictate your social life. And, best yet, never lay eyes upon a video tape again.
The TiVo is a personal video recorder (PVR), and it represents a sea change in television, far beyond the mere VCR-replacement suggested by its moniker. In addition to its recording capabilities, TiVo boasts the following abilities and features:
PVRs are always recording whatever you happen to be watching. Rewind to catch a line missed during a particularly loud sneeze, or pause for a leisurely visit to the bathroom rather than crossing your legs and dashing during a commercial break. This is probably the most popularized, yet least interesting, feature of PVRs.
Watch your favorite shows when you want to, rather than being subjected to the network executives' assigned, network-allotted time slot. Line up an evening's programming for your own personal "primetime."
Focus your children's television habit on interesting, educational, and age-appropriate shows, rather than whatever happens to flow past on any one particular channel. Skip those commercials or, better yet, choose programming from commercial-free channels. Lock out inappropriate channels and shows.
Tell TiVo to record every episode of your favorite show, no matter when or where it appears. Choose to include reruns, or ignore all but the freshest episodes.
VCRs are stupid creatures. Changes in programming lineup, available space, preferences for what to keep and what to ditch, and so forth go straight over their heads. The TiVo records the show, not the time slot. If your favorite show is airing at a different night this week or at a slightly different time, TiVo will catch that.
TiVo's WishList functionality allows you to find and record something even when you don't quite know what it is—actor, director, partial title—you're looking for.
Reclaim drawer and closet space by ridding your household of the bushels of mislabeled, half-chewed video tapes. Plus, VCR recording quality is awful. PVRs encode digitally, offering either tunable quality or encoding at the highest quality available to them from the cable or satellite. While PVRs do indeed have a space limit, you'll seldom find yourself worrying about recording space when you go out of town for a week and don't want to miss your soaps. And, of course, that space limit isn't a hard limit, thanks to hard drive upgrades.
"It will change the way you watch TV!" is the rallying cry of the evangelical group of TiVo fanatics. You bump into these people at parties and get-togethers, trying to convince others that they have to get a TiVo, or inviting perfect strangers into their homes just to give a demonstration on how it all works.
But hacking the TiVo? Hacking a closed box that just sits under my television? Why would I ever want to do that? Or, more importantly, how do I go about doing that? That question is best answered by explaining what is under the hood.
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