June 04, 2003
How Do I Love TiVo? Let Me Count the Ways...
Well I finally did it. I broke down and bought a new TiVo. Well new to us. It's actually a factory "renewed" TiVo with a one year warranty. A real steal at $249. This upgrades us from an original 30-hour unit to a new 80-hour "Series 2" TiVo with all the latest fixins: streaming music and photos from the PC, multi-room viewing, and remote web-based scheduling. We love our TiVo. I even peeled the Apple decal off my car and replaced it with the TiVo decal (Apple decals were so 90s anyway). We never watch live TV anymore -- only what is recorded on the TiVo. And I swear we are more efficient TV-watchers because of it. "Does it automatically skip the commercials!?" everyone always eagerly asks. Not automatically, but skipping commercials is not even really the point: It's so much more than that. Think of it: You never have to be home at a certain time to see TV again. Trust me, if you are even thinking about TiVo, just go get one. It's worth it.
This story seems to have the privacy alarmists up in arms: TiVo to Sell Reports on Users' TV Viewing Habits. I even heard a spot on NPR's Marketplace about it. It really perplexes me: I'm worried about medical insurers or the government invading my privacy and using it against me, but we're up in arms that NBC will know I like Friends? Frankly, I would like the networks to know more about what I watch; then maybe they wouldn't cancel the programs I like and keep rolling out lame reality shows. Really, privacy from advertisers is not something that concerns me in the least. They don't care about my individual habits, only demographics. Maybe someday they'll do targeted advertising. Would that be so bad? I'd like TV ads as targeted as Amazon.com's homepage recommendations. Show me another computer commercial rather than a bra ad (well, unless it's a Victoria's Secret ad). At least the Yahoo article reports an important fact that many of the alarmists articles fail to mention: TiVo allows its users to decline the monitoring of their viewing habits, but... most do not.
Posted by David at June 4, 2003 10:27 AM | EditYes! Invade my privacy if it means less mindless tripe on TV! Maybe then they wouldn't cancel Farscape to run even more lame SG-1 episodes.
Targeted advertising is not far away: digital TV can do this now. I would love to be able to push a button and see: "People who watch this show also enjoyed xyz" maybe if ads were targeted well enough, they wouldn't even have to intrude your viewing; it could be an optional service that people would actually seek out. It sounds odd, but it's not that far fetched; if you were watching an old Bogart film, you might actively wonder "where could I get a fedora like that"... and with digital TV and the Internet, it could be brought up easily on your screen.
We had a Tivo, it died on us, and was replaced by a ReplayTV. There are tweaks I would do to both systems to get them better, I love Tivo's ability to only record instances of shows you have not watched with a seasons pass, or give me a listing of what its going to record. I love that ReplayTV won't delete anything unless I set it to, or go in and delete it. Commercial skip can be hit or miss, on some shows its dead on, on others its flakey. If you ever are watching a British comedy on it, best thing to do is turn off the commercial skip, otherwise you may miss part of the middle of the show.