Last night Sir Monkeypants was flipping around the TV channels while we were waiting for The Amazing Race to begin, and he turned to a sitcom we’ve never seen before, The New Adventures Of Old Christine. The title character, Christine, was supposed to go and vote, but she forgot because she was watching American Idol. She had this conversation with her civic-minded ex-husband:
Christine: I’d like to vote but…Idol.
Ex: So? TiVO it and let’s go!
Christine: It’s broken! We’re watching it live…like animals!
This made me laugh out loud…we laugh because it’s funny, and we laugh because it’s true. I’m so, so into my PVR now, I know I could never go back to living without it. A few years ago I remember we were over at FameThrowa ‘s place, and we were watching a movie on TV, and the Captain, who was just a baby, woke up from his nap and starting fussing, and there was only five minutes left in the movie, so Sir Monkeypants and I were standing in front of the TV willing it to end quickly. And then FameThrowa said, “Just pause it,” and leaned over and PAUSED HER LIVE TV, and we just about fell over from the beauty and magic of that moment.
Once we had our own PVR, it was amazing how fast we got used to being able to pause and rewind. I now find myself wanting to rewind the radio in the car when an annoying thing like a lane change has made me miss a few seconds of CBC’s The Current. Every time we go to visit my mom, we have to explain to our kids that not only can we NOT pause it, and NOT rewind it, but also, there is NOTHING stored on the PVR, and all we can watch is whatever happens to be on RIGHT NOW. You can see the nightmares growing in their little heads with every word.
A few weeks ago, our PVR died, a very sad day in the TurtleHead household. We quickly borrowed a single-tuner one from our friends, but in the end we decided we just HAD to have a double tuner (the dead one was a double), so we splurged for a new one. And I just got finished paying our massive monthly Bell bill, and despite the fact that we are kind of looking to save a little money right now, I just can’t even consider cutting back on our Bell services (which include the satellite and internet).
It’s funny, I don’t consider myself to be a really technical person, and every time poor Sir Monkeypants wants to bring something new and cool into the house, he has to a) suffer through many, many eye-rolls as I make it known that I am clearly humouring him and his desire for man-toys, b) spend many, many hours teaching me how to work it, and showing me excitedly how it will change my life, while I continue with the eye-rolling, combined with complaints about the number of remotes we have house, and then c) deal with the fact that he hardly ever gets to use said item as I take it completely over, and exclaim frequently how it has changed my life, and how I’ll never live without it again.
It’s a PVR world for me, in any case.
TurtleHead 
What kind of PVR do you have, and do you need to be on Bell to use it?
It’s a Bell brand PVR. But I don’t know if that means that we have to be on Bell to use it…probably? Possibly not?
Questions like that are definitely handled by the technical guy in the house. I just work the remotes :).
It’s a Bell PVR and it functions as both your satellite receiver and your PVR. It doesn’t take a standard cable input so that it could work independently with a Roger’s feed or rabbit ears.
In reality it’s a product made by Dish Networks for Bell. You can see some information on their PVR units here. It seems that they cater to satellite companies like Bell.
Rogers has a similar box — I’ve heard that it’s still flaky and doesn’t work as well. True? Propaganda? I dunno. I can say that the Bell unit works pretty well.
I remember having the exact same experience after we first got our TiVo — it wasn’t more than a few days before I found myself reflexively (mentally) reaching for the rewind button while listening to the radio or watching a movie. From unknown to indispensable almost in the blink of an eye.
Sadly, I also often feel that this is more the exception than the rule. The rewind and pause buttons work great and I couldn’t imagine living without them. But there are so many examples of where technology could be so much better than it is and ends up wasting as much of my time as it saves. That’s frustrating. Probably the net benefit is positive, but there’s a lot of one step backward for every two steps forward’.
I’ve reflected on this a lot and I think it’s because as a society we are so technology-hungry that we want everything now, rather than waiting until and idea or technology has matured. Or maybe that’s just symptomatic of being an ‘early adopter’, even though I’ve never really considered myself one of those.
Sorry for the somewhat tangential response, but it just seemed like the right time to get it off my chest…
Nope, true. LittleSis has the Rogers box, and it’s so crappy I asked last time I was over if it was really old or something. Nope, just crappy.
We’ve had our share too of technical devices that don’t really work, or don’t live up to our expectations. But in general I’ve been really impressed at the stuff that has brought into the house and gotten working.
I think I am lucky in that a) loves to shop for this kind of thing, so he does all the research ahead of time, using the web extensively before purchase to make sure it is a reliable product and good value for our money, and b) he does all the setup and configuration and swearing required to get the thing working, and I just get to sit back and reap the benefits once it’s all up and ready.
I think what you need to do is get yourself a live-in tech guy, and then you’re technical life would be so much happier :).
Well, actually I am that guy. I guess that’s why I whine about it — it’s usually me who has to do all the swearing. What I find most frustrating is the things that almost work, but the last 1% that doesn’t makes them about half as good as they should be. Like our Logitech universal remote, which is mostly awesome, except that it refuses to learn one key function for our receiver, and also the receiver only responds about half the time to the signal from the remote to turn off.
Perhaps the other thing that exacerbates this for me is that I can be really stubborn — no matter what the problem, I know there’s always a reason and there’s almost always a workaround, and I sometimes spend way too long trying to find it. Sometimes I win, and it’s very gratifying, but when I eventually give up I’m usually pretty exhausted.