in front of the tv all weekend?

Posted Monday, August 30, 2004, at 08:16AM by e;

As you can see, I took the last couple days off here. My last post was Friday at 9am. Friday at 9pm I got a Tivo.

Coincidence?

Actually, yeah... But the Tivo has already made itself an integral part of my tv watching experience. I mentioned earlier in the month that the Toshiba SD-H400 was really tempting me, and in the end it won. I even purchased it despite missing the $199 sale, and having to pay $250 instead (before $100 mail-in rebate). The urge was still there, though, so I gave in.

I was primarily worried about how the Tivo and the Comcast digital cable box would interact. Thankfully it's better than I had feared. The cable box does have a working serial port, and the Tivo can use it to change channels. That keeps me from having to worry about any sort of an IR repeater. Channel changing is a bit sluggish, but other than that it's fine.

It's amazing how quickly it clicks that the Tivo is a very different tv watching experience. Last night Kathy and I were watching Sportscenter, and she walked into the kitchen for a minute. She returned for #2 of the week's top 10 plays. "Do you have the others?" "Sure." Hit the reverse button, back up a minute or two, and there we are at #10. That's what Tivo's automatic recording of live tv will do for you.

But you know all that; it's just me that's quite late to the Tivo party.