Thursday, August 1, 2002

Digital Video Recorders - Changing the Way You Watch TV

Interesting reports from today’s NY Times about TiVo and ReplayTV:




TV Magic, Made More Magical Still. Imagine a gizmo so amazing that everyone who bought it turned into an evangelical fanatic, extolling its virtues to anyone within earshot. Such a machine exists. By David Pogue. [New York Times: Technology]

David reviews the new Replay 4500, which sounds like it’s got some nice advantages over the current TiVo units. One of these features is ad skipping…




Skipping Commercials? Not So Fast.. TV executives are positively hysterical about the prospect of viewers skipping ads using digital video recorders, and they’re contemplating solutions some of them are scary. By David Pogue. [New York Times: Technology]

Of course, TiVo does have a 30 second skip – a simple little hack that TechTV taught us (thanks again to Denise for the pointer a few months ago).



I still haven’t seen mainstream press positioning TiVo (and Replay for that matter) as nirvana for young families. In our house, our 2 year-old is in love with Elmo and Blue’s Clues. With our “season pass”, we always have two episodes of Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues available. Rather than be tied to the actual broadcast time of any of these shows, we are able to pull one up when it’s needed. Very nice. (Of course, when we’re visiting folks and we can’t magically make Elmo appear, our two year-old gets upset…)

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