N O T C R A P

I haven't seen a commercial since I bought it 8 months ago.

Yesterday it decided to record both MacGyver and Family Guy for me.

I can skip past all the dumbass jock whooping and hollering at the start of the Daily Show, etc.

I hooked it up to my wireless network so now it doesn't even use the phone line.

It makes very satisfying bleep noises.

N O T C R A P

I don't have one, so I don't think I'm allowed to vote. I'm curious though - do TiVo owners find that they watch more or less TV than before? And how many hours a day are we talking here?

Dylan wrote:I don't have one, so I don't think I'm allowed to vote. I'm curious though - do TiVo owners find that they watch more or less TV than before? And how many hours a day are we talking here?

An excellent question (and also the most common one regarding TiVo).

I get time to maybe watch 30 mins of TV a day, at most, but I rarely watch TV every day. TiVo makes those 30 minutes enjoyable, commercial-free, and I'm able to quickly skip crap in the shows that I don't enjoy. I also always have the latest news segment from BBC America ready to watch when I want. Plus, Comcast have an on-demand service now so there's really nothing that I can't watch immediately if I look hard enough.

So, when I sit my lard ass down, I get the stuff that I want and none of the crap. It hasn't made me more of a couch potato and at this point I don't think it will. About 3 of my friends have it too, and they've experienced the same thing.

if you watch any tv and don't just have an antenna hooked up to it

buy a tivo

and just buy the lifetime subscription, and be done with it

when i want to watch tv, i sit down and watch things i like, every time. i have been busy doing shit lately, but then the other night i sat down and watched the last three chappelle shows--1.5hrs live running time--in about an hour.

last year, i watched all but two games of the baseball playoffs. each game took around an hour and a half, probably, unless i felt like basking in the between-innings banter of joe buck and tim mccarver.

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/ -- my tivo is like 230hrs now. it's kind of sick.

dylan, i watched more tv at first, but the same amt or a little less now that i am not gorging on it as much

tmidgett wrote:buy a tivo

and just buy the lifetime subscription, and be done with it

Watch out though - the lifetime subscription is per-device, not per-household. So if you decide to upgrade to a new TiVo in the future, you'll have to subscribe all over again.

BTW, there are alternatives to paying - FreeVo is a Linux based alternative which is free, but a lot more work (or fun, depending on your geekiness) to set up:

http://freevo.sourceforge.net/about.html

I spend less time when I do watch TV, and I enjoy it tremendously more, now that I have TiVo.

Worth every penny because I no longer have a generally negative opinion of television, and I can watch TV with absolutely no frustration.

The best device in my personal life. Better than Sonicare.

Man, Steve, your post almost makes me want to purchase one of these devices.

I don't like TV enough to want to re-arrange it to suit my schedule, but "better than Soniccare" is a bold statement.

I won a TiVo in their essay contest a few years back, and never claimed it because you had to buy the service (or so I thought). Now I feel like I made a mistake.

I think its great for all the reasons mentioned aboveeven better if you have movie channels, such as Sundance or IFC. Then you don't have to waste a trip to the video store and returning it and blah, blah.

the mrs uses it to record, I believe everything on television or maybe it just seems that way.

I don't actually have TiVo, I have the DVR system through my local cable company, don't really know what the difference in service is...

The best device in my personal life. Better than Sonicare.

steve, my friend, this is funny

b/c i recall fondly an instance when a mutual friend of ours was brushing his teeth with a sonicare in our midst

'are you practicing your blow job technique on a vibrator?'

perhaps he was, perhaps he was

this was a few years back, before the SONICAREVOLUTION

not to be confused with the TIVOLUTION

sundance channel + tivo is a real winner, and my teeth are real real clean

Now I feel like I need to bitch about my TiVo, even though I love it so, and nothing can touch its Not Crap rating.

- Once every 150 times or so, it records the wrong channel

- Setting up the wireless networking thing was a pain - it took 3 trips to Best Buy to find a device which was compatible

- If it's changing channel, it becomes unresponsive for about 10 seconds, which makes you think that your remote is out of power

- That message, "If you record this program, then these 27 others will be deleted earlier than planned" is getting on my tits

That's about it though. These qualms pale in comparison to the life-enhancing abilities that it provides though!

And now I want a Sonicare too...