Blow up your TiVo
September 21, 2006 Posted by Bryan in : Opinion , trackback,
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No one under 60 should own a TiVo. Maybe 70 for that matter.
As my wife and I sat and watched our third, hour-long episode of “The Revolution” in a row last night I thought those exact words to myself.
This thought was followed by, “What are we doing? It’s a beautiful 75 degrees outside; we should be out there getting exercise and being active or something. At a minimum we should be inside being productive.”
Then it hit me. TiVo was running my life.
Before I had TiVo I would watch maybe an average of two 30-minute shows everyday (not counting waiting room TVs, stadium Jumbotrons, and the like…). Now I watch an average of around five or six 30-minute shows every night. This has been going on since I met my current wife nearly 4 years ago (she and the TiVo were a package deal).
I sat down and did the math.
It quickly became apparent that I could have easily been the president of a major corporation or ruler of a medium sized island by now had it not been for TiVo.
Lets look at the numbers.
First off:
365 days x 4 years = 1460 days
Assuming I had not had TiVo during that 4 years and continued my same TV watching habits, here’s how it would have panned out:
2 shows x .5 hours = 1 hour of TV a day
1460 days x 1 hour of TV a day = 1460 hours of TV
But with TiVo it looks more like this:
5 shows x .5 hours = 2.5 hours of TV a day
1460 days x 2.5 hours a day = 3650 hours of TV!!!
“But wait, wait…think about the commercials!!!†say all the TiVo groupies. “What about all the time you save not having to watch commercials!?!?!â€
OK, Mr. Smarty pants, let’s keep going…
The average American TV show has about 8 minutes of commercials per half hour. That’s 16 minutes per hour or about 27% of your time spent watching commercials if you don’t have a TiVo and don’t use those commercial breaks for bodily functions. So, 3650 hours reduced by 27% equals 2737.5 hours. Skipping through the commercials with TiVo compared to sitting and watching them results in a pretty significant reduction of about 912.5 hours spent in front of the tube over a four year period. That’s something, but it’s still less than half of the original 2190 hrs difference. The remaining difference is still 1277.5 hours or slightly over 53 straight 24-hour days! Even in a best case scenario, that’s almost two straight months of the last 4 years lost to TiVo. When you figure that with sleep and work that would have stretched out to about 250 evenings (assuming 5 hours of evening a day), that’s over two thirds of a year (9 months) extra I’ve spent watching television because of TiVo, even if you consider that time as commercial free.
Things you can do in 9 months or less:
- Complete a year of college
- Grow a baby
- Learn ballroom dancing
- Train an elephant
- Serve an 8.5 month jail term
So why do I watch all this extra TV? Because it’s there. It’s not like my strength of will has suddenly changed and all of a sudden I can’t resist the allure of that flashing box that sits on a lightly stained faux wood table 10 feet from my couch. It’s just that before I had TiVo I simply couldn’t watch that much TV.
Let’s face it, there’s only so much time in the day. The amount of TV we used to watch was limited by things like the fact that we were at work, or had to pick up little Johnny at the soccer game, or take that pottery class. If you weren’t home when a show you wanted to watch was on, you didn’t watch it. Or you used the VCR. But still you were limited to recording at most the amount of TV you could fit on a tape. Plus you had the added time and frustration of searching through tapes, programming the recorder, etc., etc. I don’t know many people that used their VCRs to record more than a couple of shows a week. But TiVo is recording anytime and all the time, and hard drives with 60 and 80 hours of capacity put 8 hour SLP tapes to shame.
Add to that though, the fact that I’ve been bamboozled. And if you’ve got a TiVo, you probably have too. TiVo’s don’t free you from not having to sit in front of your TV waiting for you favorite shows as the quote below claims, they tie you to it. In fact, it works much like your local crack dealer, those damn “TiVo Suggestions†get you hooked then you keep coming back.
This is a blurb from the TiVo about page:
Your TiVo® box, powered by the amazing TiVo® service, automatically finds and digitally records all of your favorite shows, every time they’re on. Every episode of your favorite series. Every Coppola movie. Every home improvement program. Even Dora cartoons! Whatever you choose. All while you’re out living life. Plus, only TiVo lets you watch your favorite shows any time, anywhere.
All while you’re out living your life…Ok, I’ll buy that it frees you from being at home at a certain time to watch or record something, but I find a major flaw in their reasoning. If you’re out living your life, when are you supposed to watch all this stuff? What is the good of having all of the capability to record 60 hours of television a day if you’re not going to watch it? I think this is the part where we TiVo owners get hung up. For some weird
reason, it feels like you’re not getting the most out of that 300-400 dollars you paid for the hardware or service if you’re not watching all that stuff that gets recorded.
Ahh, TiVoGAL. If you were only real….(picture coutrtesy the funny peoples at BBSpot)
Sure you can watch stuff at any time, so you can take Johnny to the game and still catch your favorite show and if it just stopped there, everything would be fine. But for everyone I know that has a TiVo the “Now Playing” list becomes more like a “To Do” list. You feel obligated to keep up with that series you just found out about that everyone else is watching or obligated to watch this or that so you can delete it.
Getting back to my original point that no one under 60 should own a TiVo, it’s one thing to have a TiVo if you’re going to be sitting around the house anyway, as I expect we all will do more of as we get older. While we’re young and able, we should be out changing the world, or at least doing stuff to keep ourselves active and fun.
I’ll keep my TiVo because it does provide some worthwhile services: skipping commercials and instant replay for football games. And I don’t want to have to shell out another $300 for a lifetime membership once I do hit 70 (flash forward to 40 year old TiVo held together by duct tape and rubber bands…).
Plus once you realize you have a problem, it’s easier to fix, right? But I’m not buying that “frees up your time” crap anymore and I’ve got an appointment next week with a counselor who specializes in TiVo addictions.
And I’m picking up a book on the American Revolution that I can take with me to the gym.
(Author’s Note: I realize there are other PVRs out there but come on, we all know TiVo is the only one that actually works)
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Comments»
Hmm. I think that you’re blaming TiVo for your inability to moderate yourself. Anything is bad when you go overboard. Your TV watching could have been online game playing or gambling and would have been just as unhealthy.
I love my TiVo ’cause it allows me to watch what I want, when I have time to watch TV. No more sitting down and surfing through channels. No more watching an infomercial ’cause there’s nothing else on. No more having to remember the Prime-Time schedule to see your favorite shows. I just type in my fav shows and keywords and have a life around it.
What about setting a limit on the number of shows it’ll save so you’re not compelled to catch up? Maybe 2 episodes, rather than 10? Or cut down on the amount of Season Passes?
Have you tried using the music streaming from your PC/Mac instead of watching TV shows?
As I mentioned in the article, I don’t think it is as much a problem with not being able to control yourself as it is an issue of not realizing the effects. At least for me that’s what it was about. Once I realized the effect having that list of 125 shows there waiting on me all the time was having on my TV watching habits, it wasn’t that hard to stop watching so much.
Thanks for your comment!
I got Tivo in October and I don’t feel it obligates me to watch more television. I work weekends and nights regularly, therefore missing many college football and NFL games and Tivo allows me to watch them when I get home, and Season Passes allow me to watch my favorite shows as I please without commercials. Now the random shows it records for me get a little excessive, but I usually just delete them. I usually watch tv at night when I get home, but have already missed my favorite shows, but no more with a Season Pass. I would be watching tv then anyways, I just get to watch the shows I would otherwise miss while at work.
[…] Blow up your Tivo … […]
The average American watches 4.57 hours of TV per day. When you calculate this with average lifespan…the average American will waste 14.2 years of their life watching TV!!! What good is TV, other programming your mind with garbage? I am cancelling my cable service and putting the TV in the garage!