Thursday, November 24, 2011

Things I've noticed: How my PVR saves my time

For the last few years I've had a PVR, or Personal Video Recorder, hooked up to my television - like TiVo for you folks in the States, and the thing is, for a device I purchased due to all its time saving abilities, I am sure devoting a lot of time to watchig stuff on it.
Here is what my PVR offered me when my wife and I decided to get it:

1) No more commericals (unless I wanted to watch them)

2) We could record two things at the same time, while watching a third thing (as long as it was a thing already waiting in our PVR)

3) The machine could hold hours and hours of television for us

4) We could tell the machine which shows we like, and it would tape them at whichever weird hours they aired.

A few years later and my machine is just short of 90% full for the fifth or sixth time and I'm looking at my weekend and thinking, how many of these shows can I watch before new stuff starts airing on Monday?

You know, back in the '70s, before PVRs or even VCRs, the choices for a nights entertainment were pretty simple: Was there anyting you wanted to watch airing on television? If not, go make your own fun.

Then came the '80s and the ability to both tape a show to watch whenever you liked as well as however many times you liked. In theory this meant more freedom, but suddenly people started getting a back log of tapes, which soon included movies and even television shows. DVD and Blu-Ray have given us more options, but suddently the day doesn't seem to have enough hours.
And now, as I look at the freedom offered to me by my PVR, I start to wonder, would I be better off without TV for a while?

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