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DirecTiVo

10/23/01

I arrived in San Francisco about two weeks ago, and my friend Melissa Kern was kind enough to put me up for a few days until I found a place to live.  When I got to town, I showed up on a Saturday and although Melissa was not around, her boyfriend Andrew was, so he gave me the tour of their Inner Sunset house and where I would be staying.

After I dropped off my stuff in my basement room, I went up to the living room.  There, my friends, was a guy fantasy just waiting to be realized. 40-inch HDTV, with all the fixins:  DVD player, CD changer, high end receiver and a strange metallic box.

"Hey Andrew, what is the metallic box for?"

"That is our DirecTiVo unit."

"Wait--that is a combination unit?"

"Oh yeah it is!  They make them together now."

My jaw hit the floor like a rock.  I was already a DirecTV fan--I insisted on having it at my last apartment, because our regular cable provider was such a rip-off--but I was not very knowledgeable about TiVo.  Only a couple of my friends had TiVo, but having the chance to watch sports instant replays was the only thing that seemed to be stressed in the TiVo ads, so I thought it was pretty stupid.

Over the next three days, Andrew, Melissa and their roommate Jascha showed me the proverbial light.  The genius of TiVo goes well beyond being able to go back and watch a scene that you just watched over and over again.  First off, I never have to sit down and watch live TV again.  Melissa was a big fan of the following shows:  "Undeclared" (that new college comedy on Fox), "Scrubs", some show called "The System" on Court TV, and "The Practice."  So, because she wasn't always around during the times that the show actually aired, she set up TiVo to record the shows while she would be out.  How, you ask?  TiVo utilizes a hard drive to digitally record any show that appears on the channels you subscribe to.  So, you can set it up to record certain shows every week...this is called a Season Pass.  So, every original episode of "Undeclared", for example, gets recorded when it comes on and can be watched at Melissa's convenience.  Because TiVo uses a hard drive, there is no need to own a VCR.  The show will stay on the hard drive until you have watched it.

(It should be noted here that Andrew and Jascha took this capability to the extreme.  You can actually hook additional hard drives to the original receiver, so even though the unit they bought in the store was capable of holding 35 hours' worth of shows, the unit in their house had another 80-hour hard drive hooked to it, so they could store over 100 hours of television.  Folks, these guys had shows from *June* that were still on the hard drive!)

Just for the Season Pass features alone, I knew after 24 hours with TiVo that I would be buying a combination unit for my apartment.  TiVo--which costs $10/month to utilize--might be one of the greatest creations ever.  By recording all my shows for me, I can now go out around my schedule and still catch the shows that I like to watch.  And, when you have network shows recorded, you can fast forward through commercials on your tape more easily than you could if you were to record the same show on a VHS tape.

So when I moved into my new apartment, I went out to the local electronics store and bought a combo unit.  The Phillips unit that I bought normally costs $250, but there was an in-store promotion going on, so I got my unit for $150.  You will need to buy a satellite dish, too, and that will run you $50 or $60.  Just make sure that it is a dual LNB dish...I'll tell you why in a second.  When you buy the equipment and promise to sign up for DirecTV, they will usually waive the installation cost, which could run you $180-$200.  When I got my installation done, I got four free months of the best DirecTV package available (225 channels), plus NFL Sunday Ticket (i.e., every single football game on TV in a given week) for $42.99.  (Yes, this was an amazing deal.)

Buying the dual LNB dish is key.  If you have only one TV, this works out very, very well.  What happens is when the DirecTV folks come to install your dish and receiver, they will ask you if you want to be able to record on two channels at once (also referred to as "dual tuners").  Of course you do, so you say YES.  Once you do, you can almost hear the angels singing in the heavens.  Now, you have real options:

1. You can watch one channel while you record on another channel.  Key for when you like to watch two shows that come on at the same time; you can watch one live, while you record the other.

2. You can record on both channels at the same time, so you could record two shows that come on at the same time, and not watch either since you could be out doing your own thing.

3. You can record on both channels at the same time WHILE you watch previously recorded shows on your TiVo hard drive.

For the sports fan, this is key.  Now, I can watch the game with the guys, while I record weeknight programming on my dual tuner.  Everyone is a winner!

It should be noted right here that I am not a regular series TV watcher.  For the most part, I watch football, basketball and baseball games, and "The Simpsons."  However, even I must admit that this is a good year to be a TV watcher, because for the first time in a long time, it appears that there are quality new programs on the air.  So, for me, my Season Passes will be the new ABC spy show "Alias", the yet-to-air Kiefer Sutherland show "24", and the worth-the-price-of-subscription "Band of Brothers" on HBO.  I watch a fair amount of game shows on The Game Show Network (their ingenious tagline is "A Winner Every 30 Minutes--Guaranteed!"), so now, no more missing "Press Your Luck" and "Family Feud."  Hail to the "Iron Chef", so no more missing that, and on TV Land, the 2 PM ET airing of "The A-Team" will no longer pass me by.  Of course, I will also have my TiVo set to record every episode of "The Simpsons" that appears on the air.

But, possibly cooler than recording shows that you like to watch is the Live TV Pause feature.

I was talking to my roommate Laura the other day about some things going on in her life, but she made the mistake of approaching me while I was watching my beloved New York Yankees play in a playoff game.  While she was talking, Laura could see that I was distracted.  "Hey, Justin, why don't you just pause the game?  You do have TiVo now, you know."

[Holy shit!, I thought.  I DO have TiVo now!]  So, I hit the pause button, and Derek Jeter froze on my TV screen mid-at bat.  Laura and I had a fifteen-minute conversation, and when it was done, I hit the play button, and the game resumed action!  When commercials came on (because remember, I was *behind* fifteen minutes), I just fast-forwarded through them, and by doing this caught up to real time in a matter of minutes.  You can pause the action and resume watching the channel you were already on as long as you don't change the channel, as TiVo always saves room in its short-term memory to allow the viewer to watch parts of their current channel over and over again.  In the past, if people called during "my show" ("The Simpsons"), I just wouldn't answer the phone.  Now, I can pause the episode before answering the phone, talk to friends, and still catch the show.

The list goes on and on.  Because I have 40 movie channels right now (7 HBOs, 3 Skinamaxes, 4 Starz!, 4 Showtimes, The Sundance Channel, the Independent Film Channel, two Disneys, TCM, AMC, Bravo!, theme channels--Action, Western, Horror, etc.--and two TMCs...there are more, I am just forgetting now), I can't be watching all these mo-fos at once.  So, if I glimpse through the on-screen TiVo guide and see a movie that I like, then I will just tap the Record button every time I see a movie that I want to see, and check it out.  So, a couple days ago I saw an older Jet Li/Michelle Yeoh film called "Twin Warriors" (record), my favorite film about Star Trek fans called "Trekkies" (record) and the Harvey Keitel dirty cop movie "Bad Lieutenant" (record).  All of them came on after my bed time, so I just set TiVo up to record then I watched them at my convenience.

You can record shows by actor or director or theme, so for the month of November, I am setting up TiVo to record every single movie that comes on starring Chow Yun-Fat, my favorite actor.  That feature is so boss.  I am one of the 14 people left in America that has not seen that Michael Jackson video yet.  So, I am setting up TiVo to record MTV during the time that its main video program, "Total Request Live", is on so that I can hopefully see the video.  Of course, I won't watch the whole program, I will just fast forward through the N Sync and P-Diddy crap until I find my man MJ.

Am I in love with TiVo?  Much like when girls ask if you love them, or if you are IN love with them, this is a tricky, tricky question.  But, I am IN love with DirecTiVo.  Sure, it is a pretty cool toy, but the ability to watch some shows every so often is nice...and, now I can do it at my leisure and know that I'm not missing anything.  TiVo, where have you been all my life?

 

And now, at the behest of Charles "The Chuckwagon" Longer:  Random Bellview Ratings!!

• The housing rental market in San Francisco:  Opening Weekend

• Poetry slams at The Justice League:  $8.25 Show

• Meeting a hot woman, only to find out she is a regular weed smoker:  Matinee

• Having your toilet stopped up just eleven days after moving in:  Rental

• The Washington Redskins/Dallas Cowboys "football game" last Monday night:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com