I used to poke fun at people who needed a remote to control their television. I'd say if I can't get up and change channels, I have no business watching. They'd say they need the 'mute' button so that they wouldn't have to see all the commercials.
I'd sound off and say if it wasn't for the sponsors, we wouldn't have such good shows....they're paying the bill....and it's like cheating using the mute button for that.
Well, have I changed my tune. My kids sent me a TiVo....and I let the program run maybe half an hour before I air it so that I can eliminate all those 'annoying' commercials.
Mind you, this is what I did for a living 9 years of my life. I worked at a radio station and wrote copy and that's what paid the bills.
I guess it all depends on what side of the counter you're on. Now I'm on the watching side...not the selling side...so I can do this.
But....it it really fair??? Is it the right thing to do????
I dunno !!!!
1997, a company changed the way people watch television. It promised its customers that they wouldn't have to worry about television schedules or learn to program their VCRs. Instead, the company claimed that
customers would be able to record shows -- even entire seasons of shows -- using a simple interface. Then they could watch the shows whenever they wanted.
The company was TiVo, the pioneer in commercially-available digital video recorders (DVR). In its 10-year history, TiVo has sold millions of DVRs and service subscriptions. In this article, we'll look at how the typical set works and the services TiVo provides.
Several manufacturers make TiVo sets, including TiVo itself, but they all have one thing in common -- a hard drive. The hard drive is connected to the outside world through a variety of jacks on the back of the set, usually the typical RCA connections that you would use to hook up, say, a cable box or a VCR.
