Sunday, January 09, 2005

Jumped on the Bandwagon

We are finally the proud users of a DVR. Huh, DeeVee what?? Well, it's the generic term for a Tivo. We been talking about getting one for quite some time, but I didn't want to pony up the cash & monthly service fee for a stand-alone Tivo box. I was going to build my own DVR, but I never found a cheap enough desktop to do it on. Afterall, if I was too cheap to pay for a Tivo, I should over-spend on building a DVR either.

So finally Comcast comes to the rescue with DVR service in our area. We had to get a new cable box, but the cable set it up in less than 5 minutes and I was ready to roll. No buying a box. I just have to pay a $10 monthly fee for it. Yes, that's more than I'd like to pay, but whenever we get HDTV, the box will automatically show HDTV since the box is an HD decoder as well. And at no extra cost. The best thing about getting the service from Comcast rather than through Tivo, ReplayTV, or my own box? The box has two tuners so I can watch something else while it records. It can also record two shows at once. All this without having an extra box beneath the TV.

I've heard people preach about their Tivo's and how they can't live without the service. I'm not so sure I'll ever be that convinced about the utility of a DVR, but its been quite useful in the week that we've had it so far. I can now watch BBC news everyday and not worry about forgetting to watch it. My wife can watch her Indian soap operas at a time when it's least annoying for me :) Plus I can record all the movies I like. This is especially useful since it seems like all the good movies come when it's too late to watch. I can't understand why HBO, Encore, and the rest of the movie channels reserve the wee hours for the better movies. But now I've trumped them since I can just look through the night's programming and record whatever I feel like.

If I end up becoming addicted to this stuff, I'll report back.

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