Life With TiVo

OK, it's Day Three of living with TiVo, and already I'm feeling pretty glad that I bought the thing. It seemed like it'd be really useful to help make sure I don't miss the shows I'm heavily invested in, but I'm starting to realize that it's almost more useful for catching shows I enjoy but don't want to go out of my way to watch. It's nice to have stuff like that saved up for when I want to watch something, but there's nothing on and I'm out of DVDs. This came in especially handy yesterday when I came home sick after deciding that, for that day, at least, the allergies had won and I needed to put in some good, quality lying-on-the-couch time. Man, oh, man, I hadn't watched The Daily Show in forever, and that is just a shame.

It's started making suggestions for me, too, some of which are... interesting. The first two shows it recorded for me all on its own initiative were Jaws and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. For no reason I can put my finger on, this amuses me immensely. But, y'know, that's not at all bad for a first-guess approximation of my tastes.

I only wish there was some way to tell it things like, "I love this show, so do use it for making recommendations, but I have it all on DVD so there's no point in recording it" or "I am interested in that show, but since I missed the first few eps, I'm waiting for the marathon to catch up, so don't bother until then." I have the feeling it's likely to become a bit annoying to keep weeding out shows that fall under those kinds of categories.

Ah, well. That may be pretty minor. And the gadget does get about a thousand brownie points for the fact that it jumps back a few seconds when you go from "fast forward" to "play," thus accounting for fallible human reaction time. I like that feature.