TiVo, the SuperBowl, and Wardrobe Malfunctions

I don't think anyone has seen my TiVo that doesn't covet it.

It will come up in a conversation. I will say something like, "No, I haven't seen that episode yet, but I TiVo'ed it." ("TiVo," you see, has become a verb.) Their eyes will widen -- "You have a TiVo?" They have all heard someone talk about it, but it sounds like a techie thing that is probably too complicated to get involved with. I then have to explain that you don't have to be a nerd to have a TiVo. You pretty much just hook it up and go. In this day and age, I say, I don't understand how anyone can live without a TiVo.

"Well, ...um... What exactly does it do?"

"Oh," I respond, "it does many things."

• Ever watch TV, have the phone ring, and have to do a quick assessment about whether you would rather miss the call, or miss a critical chunk of the show you're watching? Not a problem with TiVo. You just pause it. Live TV? Yup. TiVo will stow away the piece you are missing -- up to half an hour of material -- while you are talking on the phone, answering the door, taking a power nap, getting a snack, or answering the call of nature. Press the button again, and it resumes where you left off. (My wife and I use the pause feature even more often to stop the TV to review what just happened and discuss its implications for the plot.)
• Ever wish you could have your own personal replay? Live TV? Yup. In slow motion, if you like. A single button backs you up 8 seconds and resumes, as many times as you want. Or just press the rewind button and go back as much as half an hour. (My wife and I use this most often to get a second or third chance to understand a piece of barely-intelligible dialog.)
• With TiVo, you can get a "Season Ticket" to your favorite series, automatically recording all episodes when they are broadcast, without further intervention. You can even instruct TiVo not to record repeat episodes.
• Here's the key to never watching another commercial: If there is a 1-hour program you want to watch, tune to it on time, but watch it 20 minutes later. Back up 20 minutes, and fast-forward through the commercials. There are, on average, 20 minutes worth of commercials in every hour-long program. (This is why, in the age of TiVo, web-based advertising is becoming more important.)

At this point in the conversation, a demonstration is generally required, followed by incessant coveting.

TiVo is sometimes described as a "Venus" technology, because women seem to like it as much as men. One of the things my wife likes most about it is that she can hit the pause button before saying something to me, and I actually register the fact that she is talking to me.

TiVo does a lot of other things, but these are the features we use the most. Since we are hooked up to satellite TV, we also use it to schedule recordings of pay-per-view movies at, say, 1:00 in the morning, when no one in the house is watching anything else. I was an early adopter, so my TiVo doesn't do all that the newer ones do, like making DVD's from recorded programs, scheduling recordings over the internet, or broadcasting the show to other TV's in the house.

However, my TiVo has a feature that newer TiVo's don't: I have the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction on my TiVo.

That's right, I recorded last year's SuperBowl. During halftime, I went off and drank beer, or something, and it wasn't until the next day that I even heard that something unusual happened during the halftime festivities. Even when I heard about it, the TiVo slow-motion replay possibilities didn't occur to me, until a friend came over.

As my friend was coveting my TiVo, I off-handedly mentioned that I had recorded the SuperBowl. His eyes widened. Did you get the halftime show? Well, sure, but what... oh... yeah, I did!

I want to say that in no way did my friend and I make a statistically signficant contribution to the "most TiVo'ed moment in 2004" record that has been so widely publicized. We couldn't have added more than, say, one or two percent to the total.

I think a complete recording of the 2004 SuperBowl will have some enduring historical value, don't you? That, I assure you, is the only reason I haven't deleted it from my TiVo.

Power to the people.

T.I.N.