TiVo

oh, TiVo, let me wax episodic about thee.
On the other hand, maybe not.

How Do I Love Thee, TiVo?
TiVos and other digital video recorders are still not wildly popular. But those who do own the machines are wild about them. What gives? [New York Times: Technology]

Owners of digital video recorders are still a relatively small niche. Adi Kishore of the Yankee Group, a research firm, estimates that there are fewer than 3.5 million of the devices in the United States, scattered among about 108 million households with televisions. (That figure does not include a relatively small number of consumers who with special hardware and software have turned their PC's into video recorders.)

But users are a passionate minority, eager to proselytize about the technology to the uninitiated.

Uhh, yeah. That's me. I just ordered my second one. I've convinced only 2 people to purchase, but still wax episodic, and there are a couple more I am trying to sway. Sort of like Apple Computer: but with TV.

And like books piled high on a nightstand, the abundance of selected programs stored on a recorder's hard drive can start to seem more like a challenge than a pleasure to be savored.

Faced with a backlog of 100 hours of stored programming, Mr. Fisher, the TV development executive, and his wife skipped the movie theater last Christmas Day and waded through the recorded shows instead. "We didn't leave the room all day," Mr. Fisher said. "And we felt kind of sleazy afterwards."

Now playing: Fairytale Of New York, from the album If I Should Fall From Grace With God by Pogues, The (released 1988)