December 2, 2004

Don't Ruin the Tivo!

According to an article at CNN.com, in March Tivos will start showing popups of logos for ads during fast forwards. That's just not right. I've got the pseudo-hack enabled to skip forward 30 seconds so I don't have to watch any commercials, and the article doesn't say anything about that, but I don't want to see even more advertising! I see enough! I understand that Tivo is a company that is first and foremost trying to make a buck while providing a useful service, I really do, but they need to find less intrusive ways of doing that.

I'm a big Tivo fan. We own two Tivos, which are networked together so we can transfer shows between them. We "save" money by having two, since the price of two together is less than double the price of having only one. You can do nifty things like online scheduling and I really am looking forward to their collaboration with Netflix next year. Now that could be a good revenue source for them. I'll gladly pay a monthly fee to download movies. I don't even mind if they are automatically deleted after a week, like the article mentions will happen with PPV. That's fair enough, if I want to watch it forever, I should buy it.

What isn't fair enough are networks that start shows a minute early or late. There are theories that they do this specifically to confound your PVR, since you'll likely chop the start or end off if you don't schedule around it. If you schedule something to go one minute long, then something that starts while it's going will not be Tivo'd. I wish Tivo would give you the option to start something one minute late, but so far they haven't caught on that this would be a good idea. I'd send them an email, but I can't find an email appropriate email address to let them know how I feel about it. That's a PFFT right there.

There aren't many TV shows on right now that I care about watching. Lost is great, The Amazing Race is good, Desperate Housewives is more fun than I ever expected it to be, and I'm looking forward to Alias and 24, but other than that, there's not much to get excited about. So I Tivo some old shows that I liked, like Deep Space 9, Angel, Dick van Dyke Show, and I'd give my eyeteeth for Get Smart to be on TV somewhere. That's what Tivo is really good for, and I never have to pay attention to when something comes on. Don't ruin the Tivo with annoying things that make me regret how good it could have been.

Published: December 2, 2004
Editor: stacy