Today will be wrestle-with-televisual-technology day at the Griffith-Eskridge household.
We got our first TiVo in 1999. We were the only people we knew who had one. It changed our viewing lives. For a while, it even changed my understanding of time.This notion of just…watching a TV show whenever I wanted really jarred my orderly notions of the universe. For a while I was confused. (Me: “Let’s watch Buffy now.” K: “But it’s not on until Tuesday.” Me: “What’s your point?”)
TiVo meant that I started watching less and less television. When I could get anything I wanted, and then watch it whenever I wanted, I stopped feeling that watch it! watch it! urgency. Also, it meant that I could enjoy my secret passions (Antiques Roadshow and science/history educational programming) without worrying that I was frittering away my precious time with Kelley on something she wasn’t terribly interested in.
So, anyway, TiVo rocks. We bought a lifetime subscription right at the beginning. We upgraded every time there was something worth having. Currently we have a TiVo Series 2 Dual Tuner: recording two shows at the same time! An upgrade from omnipotence to omnipresence. We like that…
But the Dual Tuner feature became useless when Comcast stopped playing nicely with TiVo a while ago. (Why did Comcast stop playing nicely? Because they could. Because they are, essentially, a monopoly. And they want their subscribers to use their proprietary DVR. Given that Comcast’s UIs are, to put it kindly, primitive, we’ve eschewed it.) This means we’ve been bending ourselves further and further from Standard to get both cable and TiVo without spending a zillion dollars on upgrading everything every year. This involves splitting the signal in weird and complicated ways, feeding it in two steps through… Ah, never mind. Here’s a photo instead:
As you can see: a big spaghetti mess of cabling. We’re tired of it. Also, we’re tired of the degraded signal. Tired of not being able to recored two shows at once. Tired of not being able to stream programming from Netflix, iTunes, all that stuff. (It’s embarrassing to be a science fiction writer–at least sometimes–and not be able to watch stuff from the intarwobble.) So we finally caved and have shelled out for the nifty new TiVo Premiere. And an M-card from Comcast. Now we should be able to get rid of our cable box and watch anything on the planet. More specifically, we should be able to record Camelot and Merlin at the same time, in glorious HD. Assuming that, y’know, today’s wrestling goes our way.
You’ll notice that I’ve been using the magisterial (and occasionally godlike) ‘we’. But when it comes to technology the Griffith-Eskridge household doesn’t operate as a team. This is because we have a different process, different approach, and very different attitude towards following instructions. Which we discovered when we bought our first some-assembly-required furniture. In other words, when it comes to technical instructions, working as a team leads to madness (and grumpiness, and glares). So now one of us does it. And Kelley is the TV cable queen. On this one, my job is to stay out of the way. Mostly. And when I do appear, to simply offer encouragement, and a few ‘Those bastards!’ and promise a splendid evening at the pub when signals are flowing, the last boxes and bits of cable have been put away, and the divots in the wall replastered and painted. (Just kidding. K never attacks the house. That’s my speciality.)
Wish us luck. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Good luck! :) Sounds like a primo set up. I think that thing will stream just about anything except iTunes store video.
What I think is a really cool feature with Tivo is the app for your iThing.
Speaking of iTunes (and re your post yesterday), did you see that there are video podcasts for Game of Thrones on iTunes? They have one on the costumes.
jennifer, I've seen every special they've made for GoT…
Oh, I so get it, the “not working well as a team” thing. Donna and I do some things remarkably well together, but other things it is best one or the other not even be in the house because the difference in approach is such a maddening source of friction.
I should've known. :) You're the one who got me started.
So envious, feel like the poor cousin living here in Oz. Tivo is available here, with the dual tuner you mention, but the program list leaves so much to be desired… Fingers crossed for a brighter future!
Nicola — there was a very significant moment for me when I was 3 or 4 when I realized that TV time was linear and discrete and unique and ephemeral. You could not just turn on the TV any time and watch Officer Don and The Popeye Club. And Captain Kangaroo was only there in the morning and it was a different show every day and once it was over and gone you couldn't get it back.
50 years later, and VHS, TiVo, dvrs and the internet have changed all that. I'm guessing 4-year-olds these days have a very different sense of what “television” is and what it can do.
Good luck with the install!
Jude, I think we're going to need some luck: first problem, the router is being weird.
Dianne, all the children I know use iPads. Yeah, pretty different.
Uh oh.
Jennifer, we've got stuff first-round set up sorted, now. TiVo's gotta do its populate channels thing and transfer settings. Then we have to figure out why using the HDMI cable takes away the non-stretch option on the TV view mode. Lots o' work ahead…
Then testing…