The Best Thing Since Color

If you've been paying attention to the subtleties and innuendos latent in Fight.Boredom's topics over the past year and a half than you've probably read about how much we love TiVo.

It's not a crude or vulgar love. It's the love one might have for air or food. It's the love of something so necessary, now that you've found it, that you're not sure how you ever lived without it.

Do we sound obsessed yet? Maybe a little. If this surprises you than you've obviously never used TiVo.

TiVo is a service that automatically records your favorite television shows every time they air, even if the time slot changes. You watch what you want, when you can. There's no more aimless channel surfing, no more rigid network schedules, no more interruptions like phone calls, and no more missing out on great programming you're paying for. And you can use your TV more efficiently. With TiVo's ability to fast-forward through recorded or buffered TV, you can watch more TV in less time (we dare you to watch 24 without commercials...that's an adrenaline rush...)

Through the use of Season Passes and advance schedules, you can queue up what you want to see and then go about your life. Like Saturday Night Live but want to go out Saturday night? TiVo it and watch it later (SNL lasts only about 40 minutes without commercials and musical guests, incidentally). TiVo buffers live TV, too, so you can pause, rewind, and fast forward and never miss a thing.

And new TiVo recorders come with 35 to 80 hours of hard drive space. TiVo can also connect with your computer, wirelessly, so you can access PC-based MP3s and photos on your entertainment center.

We watch less TV now than we ever did before, though we watch more, and better, programs. No more sitting through commercials. No more adjusting our lives to suit network schedules.

Just think: Sunday nights use to be spent trapped indoors waiting for the Simpsons and X-files. With TiVo, the evening is free and the Simpsons will be there for me to watch when I will.

Thanks, TiVo!

Freedom is a wonderful thing. You just have to love it. fb