Come in, sit down, meet TiVo
By Teresa K. Flatley

The newest member of our family arrived over the holidays in a sleek black box, sporting a saucy smile and perky antenna ears. TiVo, the bellwether of the Got to “TiVolution” revolution, has become just one of the family, someone we talk to, quote and have come to rely on.

TiVo is a digital video recording system, which will eventually replace the antiquated (their idea, not mine) VCR for taping television shows. The creators of the system claim that, with TiVo, we will never miss our favorite shows again; that we can watch more of what we like and less of what we don’t and that we can pause live TV for as long as 30 minutes. That way, if we get a phone call in the middle of “CSI,” we won’t miss any gruesome shots of the latest autopsy.

Now this assumes there are programs on television worth watching, but we’ll leave that for a future column.

Our old routine for taping television shows with the VCR was iffy at best. Before we left the house we had to turn the TV to the right station and hope the show we wanted was being broadcast within the VCR tape’s four hour taping limit or the VCR wouldn’t capture it. Needless to say that didn’t work very well and led to a lot of disappointment when we’d get home.

Not any more. Now we can set our TiVo guy to record an entire season of shows so we never miss anything. TiVo is so smart (excuse my bragging) that he can even prevent our being bothered with reruns because you can set the machine to record only new releases. I told you he was clever.

But the most interesting thing TiVo does is to intuitively decide what he thinks we want to watch. Like a relative who tells you to be sure and catch an episode of “Six Feet Under” because you’re gonna like it, TiVo does the same thing.

Every day, at least for a while after we received TiVo as a Christmas present, we would turn on the TV to see what treasures he had waiting for us. If we had recently watched an episode of “Modern Marvels,” for instance, TiVo would record a couple more episodes on his own. That’s why we can now quote chapter and verse about the Coliseum, should anyone ask. TiVo thought we would be interested in a show about the Roman wonder and we were.

But, and this makes TiVo even more like family, sometimes he chooses to do his own thing and we have no clue why. He recorded several episodes of the cartoon “Kim Possible” (there are no teenage girls in this house) and continues to record almost every college basketball game that’s on, even though we want only those being played by the University of Pittsburgh.

Sometimes it’s kind of spooky what TiVo does, though, reminding me of a movie I saw years ago in which a computer took over a house and kept the occupants prisoners. Like taping the cartoon “Jackie Chan’s Great Adventures” after we had watched “Rush Hour II,” a movie starring the real-life Chan. Or recording an NFL Films profile of San Diego Charger Kellen Winslow Sr., after we watched his son’s Miami team play against Ohio State for the National Championship this past season.

Gives you pause, doesn’t it? So far, we can still get in and out of the house OK, but I am keeping an eye on that box.