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Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Project Detour
We can't help it - we just got thrown off track by Dan and Tammy's detour and we had to go on our own little home improvement detour. What can I say? TV in bed is nice.
Mouseover for half-finished status.
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Thursday, December 02, 2004
Cory's Spot: TiVo
If you haven't heard about TiVo specifically or DVR in general, I'm sorry to say, but you're dreadfully behind the times. TiVo is a specific brand of DVR, or digital video recorder, also known as PVR, or personal video recorder, which essentially take the place of a VCR for recording programming from your TV provider and is available for use with anthing from an off-air antenna to cable to satellite.
Since I sold my soul to Convergys some time in the past and work as a customer service representative for DirecTV in their customer installation support department, I've been selling their integrated DirecTV receiver/TiVo units to people for quite some time now, and I'd begun to drool quite heavily over the technology. Well, I finally got my satellite dish installed and activated my service and, liking that, decided to take the next step and purchase one of the basic 40GB models, which allows for up to 35 hours of recording and actually records the digital stream straight from the satellite.
I have to say, I'm in love. Working full time and taking full-time credits at the university (I won't say I'm going to school full-time, because that just wouldn't be true), I had a hard time finding something to watch when I had time, even with 200+ channels to choose from. With my TiVo, I set my favorite shows to record every time they're on and set movies and other shows to record if I think my wife or I will be interested in them, either individually or together. Not only am I catching up on past episodes of Angel, Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, but my wife gets to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and we've been watching some movies we'd missed in the past or that we simply hadn't seen in some time, and this without happening to catch the show at the right time and happening to have the time the watch the show all the way through.
A couple of other features that are extremely cool are the ability to pause live TV (for up to 30 minutes) and to rewind back through the past 30 minutes of the show you're watching live, as well as the ability to start watching a show you're recording from the beginning while it continues recording through to the end, even if you start watching after it's already started (as opposed to having to wait until it's over to watch it like you do with a VCR, or even the DVR software I have on my computer). I can also record up to two shows at once, and can even watch a previously recorded show while I'm doing that. I'm telling you, the flexibility is great!
The one thing I wish I'd done differently is spend a bit more and get a unit with a larger hard drive. 35 hours is fine for a couple of first-run shows and a movie or two, but following three different series, one of which is entirely in syndication right now and the other two I've missed a lot of earlier episodes, I find that I sometimes have to watch more than I'd like to in order to not fall behind or run out of space. It's created a sick sort of addiction to TV that's at an entirely different level than I've experienced before. A larger hard drive would simply allow me to build up more of a backlog and then watch when I really have time.
Personally, I think the DirecTV DVR with TiVo is a great unit, especially if you subscribe to DirecTV (and if you're willing to pay for television, DirecTV seems to be pretty much the best option, corporate loyalty aside). Even without DirecTV service though, TiVo sells standalone units that work with pretty much any provider, or other cable and satellite providers have their own units available for sale or rental. One thing the standalone TiVo units support that I wish were available on the DirecTV models is in-home networking to share recordings between a couple of different units (so you can record a show on a TiVo unit in one room and watch in on a TiVo in another room, as opposed to having to record it on each with the DirecTV models if you want to be able to watch it in either location. I believe it's also possible to upload recordings from the standalone units to a PC to watch there or to burn to DVD, but I'm not sure. Of course that kind of functionality can be hacked into the DirecTV units (using the native Lynix OS), but I'm not quite ready to void my warranty.
In any case, I'd best be getting back to that annoying school thing. Oh, and then to watching more TiVo.
Since I sold my soul to Convergys some time in the past and work as a customer service representative for DirecTV in their customer installation support department, I've been selling their integrated DirecTV receiver/TiVo units to people for quite some time now, and I'd begun to drool quite heavily over the technology. Well, I finally got my satellite dish installed and activated my service and, liking that, decided to take the next step and purchase one of the basic 40GB models, which allows for up to 35 hours of recording and actually records the digital stream straight from the satellite.
I have to say, I'm in love. Working full time and taking full-time credits at the university (I won't say I'm going to school full-time, because that just wouldn't be true), I had a hard time finding something to watch when I had time, even with 200+ channels to choose from. With my TiVo, I set my favorite shows to record every time they're on and set movies and other shows to record if I think my wife or I will be interested in them, either individually or together. Not only am I catching up on past episodes of Angel, Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, but my wife gets to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and we've been watching some movies we'd missed in the past or that we simply hadn't seen in some time, and this without happening to catch the show at the right time and happening to have the time the watch the show all the way through.
A couple of other features that are extremely cool are the ability to pause live TV (for up to 30 minutes) and to rewind back through the past 30 minutes of the show you're watching live, as well as the ability to start watching a show you're recording from the beginning while it continues recording through to the end, even if you start watching after it's already started (as opposed to having to wait until it's over to watch it like you do with a VCR, or even the DVR software I have on my computer). I can also record up to two shows at once, and can even watch a previously recorded show while I'm doing that. I'm telling you, the flexibility is great!
The one thing I wish I'd done differently is spend a bit more and get a unit with a larger hard drive. 35 hours is fine for a couple of first-run shows and a movie or two, but following three different series, one of which is entirely in syndication right now and the other two I've missed a lot of earlier episodes, I find that I sometimes have to watch more than I'd like to in order to not fall behind or run out of space. It's created a sick sort of addiction to TV that's at an entirely different level than I've experienced before. A larger hard drive would simply allow me to build up more of a backlog and then watch when I really have time.
Personally, I think the DirecTV DVR with TiVo is a great unit, especially if you subscribe to DirecTV (and if you're willing to pay for television, DirecTV seems to be pretty much the best option, corporate loyalty aside). Even without DirecTV service though, TiVo sells standalone units that work with pretty much any provider, or other cable and satellite providers have their own units available for sale or rental. One thing the standalone TiVo units support that I wish were available on the DirecTV models is in-home networking to share recordings between a couple of different units (so you can record a show on a TiVo unit in one room and watch in on a TiVo in another room, as opposed to having to record it on each with the DirecTV models if you want to be able to watch it in either location. I believe it's also possible to upload recordings from the standalone units to a PC to watch there or to burn to DVD, but I'm not sure. Of course that kind of functionality can be hacked into the DirecTV units (using the native Lynix OS), but I'm not quite ready to void my warranty.
In any case, I'd best be getting back to that annoying school thing. Oh, and then to watching more TiVo.
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