New toy

July 23, 2004

My 80-hour TiVo came yesterday, and I got it mostly hooked up, at least to the point where it could connect and download program information as well as display images on my TV. I still have a bit of work to do to get everything hooked up the way it should be, though, which included sound coming from my speakers and not from the TV.

The setup procedure was mostly painless, and I can see why TiVo is both easy and highly recommended, even by non-technical people. Programming it was quite easy, and I’m happy to report that I now have what TiVo calls “season passes” to ER, Nip/Tuck, Friends, Seinfeld, The Dead Zone, Monk, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle, Futurama, and Family Guy. Those are the ones I can remember, at least. It was late when I did it. Basically what that means is that TiVo will record every instance of those programs it comes across in the timeslot for that show. It even knows when something’s been pre-empted, like ER was today. I saw that it was going to tape ER at 3 PM this afternoon instead of 10 AM and 11 AM, and I knew that wasn’t right, so I checked the schedule, and sure enough, it’s airing at 3 PM today. All the future airings are at 10 AM and 11 AM.

Obviously there are conflicts in its programming. Some shows overlap, and when it detects a conflict it notifies you, tells you what the conflict is (and on what day and time, too), and asks you which it should record. Wow. So Nip/Tuck, Monk, Dead Zone, Arrested Development, and ER take precedence over everything for now. The rest are shows I just enjoy watching, and I don’t have to see every episode, but at least it means I’ll never be wanting for programming to watch.

In addition to searching by genre, name, or even keyword for programs, it allows the same thing for movies. So I browsed the list of movies for the week and selected ones I’m interested in seeing and marked them for recording. Some conflicted, but I chose the movie instead of the TV show for some time slots. Others, it allowed you to find a future airing the didn’t conflict with pre-existing season passes. Personally, I think the best feature was the “wishlist”, which lets you program in keywords that you’re interested in, and it will record everything it finds with those keywords. I programmed the keywords “newsradio” and “la femme nikita”, neither of which are on the air, but if they stay in the TiVo the day a channel starts showing them I’ll start recording them. Very, very groovy.

So basically I’m discovering that TiVo doesn’t help you watch MORE TV, necessarily, but it helps you watch just what you want to watch. Sounds good to me. I probably won’t be channel surfing for awhile, or looking up what’s on given my wide variety of things that I’m recording. I’ll have to see how it goes for the next week or so, see how long it takes my unit to fill up, that kind of thing.

On a more outdoors-y note, I went to another baseball game last night. I’ve been to perhaps a dozen games in the last three years, and this was the first time I ever saw a streaker. That was enjoyable and something I’ve never seen happen. Otherwise, the game was pretty dull. And the Beavers lost.

So this weekend will be spent finishing hooking up my TiVo unit, experimenting with the programming, and ideally, finally fixing my Dad’s blasted computer. Part of the reason why I haven’t wanted to work on it was because on the weekends when I have the most time, there’s never anything on TV to keep me occupied. Hey, problem solved! So yeah, I’ll do what I can. I’m going to be tired this weekend, though. Between my long week of working hard and the three hours of sleep I got last night (or at least it sure felt like it…it’s not going to be more than four, that’s for certain), I’m going to be wiped all weekend. Tomorrow night, maybe I’ll grab a pizza or something and watch a movie or two. That’s always a good use of my time.

So until later, this guy’s going to go grab some lunch and then fill up his time until 4 PM when I scramble over to John Barleycorn’s. I was thinking of skipping beer today, but I think instead of having a couple of pints, I’ll have one half-pint of their JBC Strong beer that’s twice as alcoholic, and then fill the rest of my belly with cold draft root beer. I’ve had a lot of beer in the last couple of weeks, so I’d like to cut back a little, but no sense in being the odd man out with my coworkers.

I’ll let you know how my TiVo experimentation goes and whether it gets my full two thumbs up other the raised eyebrow it has now.

And just think Mom, even YOU could figure out how to use one!

Posted in Geekery, General