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Monday, March 10, 2003

Ask anyone who owns a TiVo, and they'll tell you the same thing: It's changed their lives. Maria and I finally hooked up our TiVo in January, and just two months later it has already completely changed how we watch TV. For starters, we watch a lot more, now that shows we've recorded are stacked up in a neat menu, ready for viewing at the press of a button. We miss fewer episodes of our favorite shows, and we've tried out new ones (such as BBC America's "Coupling") that we might have never made the time for otherwise. The age of "video on demand" is truly here, albeit not in the way that TV soothsayers were predicting a few years ago.
That's why the New York Post's uninformed diatribe against TiVo today is puzzling. If you're going to attack something, perhaps TiVo's business model is flawed. Perhaps they still haven't figured out how to market the thing (and they haven't--it's truly impossible to describe TiVo until you get it). But its clear the Post article's author has never actually seen or used TiVo. So how can the paper rail against it?
More interestingly, the New York Times reports on AOL Time Warner's secret plans to develop a TiVo rival code-named "Mystro TV." Time Warner execs like Jamie Kellner have been beating the anti-TiVo drum for a while; perhaps they've decided to follow the old "if you can't beat it, join it" axiom. Of course, their ideas for "Mystro TV" sound questionable. Apparently it won't have a button to fast forward through commercials, and users will be at the mercy of network and cable programmers. As if they're not already. Hmm, no thank you. I'll stick with TiVo.
Either way, TiVo has already become a permanently fixture in our household. We don't watch TV anymore--we watch TiVo. (Oooh, somebody call Madison Avenue.) Enough gushing for now.

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