Introduction
What in Sam Hell Is a "TiVo"?
If you're new to TiVo—and the whole concept of digital video recorders (DVR)—we'd like to take a few minutes to enthuse over how much media-manipulating fun you're in for. If you already have a TiVo, you'll likely smile at the very question of "what is TiVo?" 'cause you know the discoveries that await the asker. You also know how challenging it can be to explain all facets of TiVo to the newcomer.
The unenlightened description of TiVo is that it's a digital answer to the VCR. With a few presses of a remote control while scanning an onscreen programming guide, you can set your TiVo to record your favorite TV shows and movies. No more entering in times, dates, or channels, and no more resetting that damn clock every time the power goes out (or watching it blink "12:00" for days 'til you get around to resetting it). Once programmed, TiVo will record desired programs to a hard drive (or drives) inside the TiVo unit. There are no more VHS tapes to buy, insert, eject, lose, or to pile up like plastic stalagmites in the corners of your family room.
But TiVo is far more than a tapeless video recorder. At its core, it is a dedicated audio/video computer, and that means it's much smarter and more versatile than a VCR. Using the onscreen menus, you can ask your TiVo to record as many episodes of a program as you like (from one to five, or all episodes, subject to your hard drive capacity) and tell it how long you'd like to hang on to these episodes before deletion. You can also create program-recording requests (called "WishLists") that will tirelessly hunt down shows in the program guide based on titles, actors, directors, and keywords that you've entered. This ability of TiVo to lie in wait for something good to capture is an eternal delight. You can see a trailer for the theatrical release of a film on TV, create a WishList item for it immediately, and then many months later, regardless of what channel it shows up on for its television premier (and whether you happen to catch it in the program guide or not), TiVo will remember and dutifully record it for you.
Note - TiVo has become popular enough that most people know it by name and basically what it's for. But even the most evangelical user can struggle to explain all of TiVo's wonders in a casual conversation. TiVo, Inc. has answered the call with its "What is TiVo?" e-brochure for your Palm handheld. Okay, so whipping out your Palm and handing it to a friend across from you at Starbucks may seem silly, but how positively Star Trekkian: "I have the information you requested right here on my dataslate!" Make it so at http://www.tivo.com/4.3.7.2.asp.
Then there's the ability to pause, rewind, and fast-forward through "live" TV. You can't imagine how spiffy this is! You know the drill: You're just sitting down to an episode of Jeopardy to impress your kids with your frightening intellect (who cares if they're still in diapers?), when the phone rings. Or you're about to marvel at the surrealist splendor of the so-not-funny-it's-almost-funny "Will it Float?" segment on Letterman, when baby wakes up wailing. Pre-TiVo? You missed out on the entire Potent Potables category on Jeopardy and you never found out that a 10-pound box of dog biscuits does, in fact, float. Post-TiVo? You just hit the Pause button, answer your phone, your baby, the call of nature, the siren song of the fridge, etc. and pick up right where you left off. The incoming TV signal is constantly being temporarily stored (buffered) to the hard drive, so when you come back to your easy chair, you can fast- forward through the commercials (or the next goofy Letterman bit), if you'd like.
And this is only scratching the surface! There are many more things that TiVo can do as-is (such as recording programs it thinks you might like) and many official and unofficial ways you can upgrade, add to, and improve TiVo to make it do even more. A vibrant community of users has arisen online and they love to share advice, tips, tricks, how-tos, and sophisticated hardware and software hacks for making TiVo the best darn TV computer it can be. Once you experience TiVo itself, the good vibes and great support of the online TiVo community, and the way that digital video recording can change your life (okay, your media life, anyway), we think you'll become as rabid a TiVo spokesbot as most other TiVo owners.
WE LOVE TIVO!
TIVO RULZ!!!
Tip - If you'd like to take a peek at the fanatical TiVo community we're talking about, point your browser to—where else?—tivocommunity.com.
Why Are We Shouting?
We get worked up over TiVo (and DVR technology in general) because we think it's the greatest bit of lifestyle kit to come along since...what? The TV? The answering machine? The computer? The cell phone? All of these personal tech-tools seriously altered the way we live, work, socialize, get information, and communicate. TiVo is sort of like an answering machine for your TV. Before answering machines, you had to pick up the phone or miss calls. Answering machines suddenly gave you control. You could monitor calls, skip messages, save messages, and delete messages. It was "telephone your way" (to steal a slogan from TiVo, Inc.). A DVR gives you a similar type of control over television. You can store up the incoming messages...er...shows and watch them whenever you like. You can skip over the annoying parts (think of commercials as calls from your mother-in-law) or back up and relive those choice moments (think of Jessica Simpson's "Chicken by the Sea" comment as the TV equivalent of your uncle Louie's drunken New Year's Eve message).
And if you have a mixed marriage of a TV addict and a TV-phobe, TiVo can even help maintain marital harmony! Watch one (recorded) show while you record another. And who needs to know that you're watching half a dozen stored up episodes of Elimidate while nobody's around? "Honestly honey, I don't know how those got on there. They must be some of those misguided TiVo's suggestions. Frisky TiVo!"
Note - One of the first questions that newbies ask is: "What the heck does 'TiVo' stand for?" It's obvious what the "T" and the "V" are about, but how did the "i" and the "o" get in there and what do they mean? According to TiVo, Inc. they mean nothing; it's just a made-up word that they thought was fun-sounding. First there was TeeVee; now there's TiVo.
Gareth On...
I was sent one of the first ReplayTV models to review on my hardware review website (streettech.com). I wasn't really sure what I was going to think of this odd gadget, but it didn't take long for me to fall madly in love with it. My wife, not a big TV watcher, fell for it too, especially its ability to pause a show to attend to the phone, laundry, going over junior's homework, etc. About two weeks into our newfound DVR bliss, in the middle of Friends, there was a knock at the door. She got up to answer it and said, "Pause it." "I can't!" I blurted in a panic, "we're live through the VCR!" I was recording something on the ReplayTV and so had switched over to watch live TV through the VCR's TV tuner. After my wife answered the door, we had a good laugh over our panicked reaction. Nearly overnight, pausing live television had become a birthright.
Why TV Will Never Be the Same Again
It is unfortunate that TiVo has been so slow in catching on. DVRs have been around since 1999, and yet, as of this writing, there are only a few million units in circulation. But this is starting to change. Every technology has a watershed moment, an event that widely demonstrates its usefulness and propels it into the mainstream. For the radio, it was FDR's Fireside Chats in the '30s. For the TV, it was the Milton Berle Show (when the nation would nearly shut down on Tuesday nights in the late '40s/early '50s). Many argue that the Internet came into its own with the online publication of the Starr Report. For the cell phone, it was probably the 9/11 tragedy, where cell phone calls from the doomed planes and struck towers became a central part of the drama (and cell phone sales spiked in its wake). For TiVo, its watershed moment may, unfortunately, be the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl. The next day, everyone was talking, not only about the incident itself, but the fact that TiVo users had looked at the moment over and over again, making it the most rewound TV event since TiVo, Inc. began tracking anonymous viewer information in 2000. TiVo was even mentioned by FCC chairman Michael Powell (a devout TiVo fan) in discussing the incident and calling for an indecency investigation. Since then, it seems as though TiVo is suddenly on everybody's radar.
Gareth On...
In 2001, I was asked to speak at the annual NATPE (National Association of TV Production Executives) convention in Las Vegas. The panel was on the future of television and the Web. TiVo, Inc. had a booth at the convention, but in general, the TV execs seemed strangely unaware of this revolutionary new technology. During the talk, I told the audience that, since DVRs had entered my life, I hadn't watched a single TV commercial. There might as w...
