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  • #16
    Re: TV guides

    Originally posted by Adri View Post
    I know, times are tough for local businesses but it still feels like we're getting less worth for our money. /grumble
    Originally posted by Adri View Post
    Now I may cancel both and just go with the news I can find online.
    Originally posted by Adri View Post
    I did know about zap2it but I do find it more cumbersome to look up the tv schedule on a computer especially since I do not leave my computer on all the time.
    I'm not saying this is a lifetime disaster, just annoying and another sign of the deterioration of service/goods from businesses during these times. I know there are DVRs and Tivos but I don't have them because 1) I am not so techy and am slow to adjust to new (for me) techy things; and 2) I don't like that they build user profiles although I know that a lot of service providers build user profiles and it's not like my profile would be all that exciting.
    The tech learning curve isn't as steep as it seems, and you're paying a high price for anonymity.

    We used to have seven VCRs recording to VHS tapes on a schedule that I updated from the Sunday paper.

    When we decided to cancel our subscription and moved to Zap2It, I tailored the site to our favorite Oceanic channels. But I still had to update our paper schedule every week, trot around the house programming VCRs, and miss the schedule changes. Of course power outages were another hassle.

    And then cheap VCRs & VHS tapes started to become scarce. Video rewinders were lasting only a year or two. We added a DVD recorder but all it really did was swap one medium for another (at higher operating costs) with the same programming issues. I could see things turning ugly.

    Enter TiVo. Series 3 (HD) TiVos are a couple hundred bucks at Weaknees.com but Series 2 TiVos (non-HD) are practically being thrown out with the trash. We bought a single-tuner Series 2 off Craigslist for $85, including its $60 wireless adaptor, and ponied up the big bucks for the single-fee lifetime subscription (which has a 30-month payback). Some Craigslist sellers will even transfer their subscription as part of the sale.

    We plugged our Oceanic analog coax cable into it, plugged a couple more cables into the TV, and that was it. I spent about 30 minutes cruising setup menus and telling the TiVo what channels to find. Now it gets its own programming guide every day or less-- either by dialing in at random night hours or through a DSL/cable wired connection or even with its wireless adaptor through our router. It never misses a schedule change. Spouse (who has no interest in tech) navigated the menus with the remote and set up 50+ shows on her playlist over the first few weeks. I thought we'd need three or four TiVo tuners to keep up with her viewing habits but the single-tuner TiVo catches over 95% of what she wants and a two-tuner TiVo would easily handle 100%. (She still uses one VCR.) She watches everything she could possibly want and her user profile probably says "HGTV addict". She's finally caught up on old shows ("first & repeats") and she's only watching new programming.

    I'm totally out of a job. I don't have to deal with Zap2It anymore and I don't update the paper schedule. I threw away two VCRs and we hardly ever need a new VHS tape. (I don't know-- it's not my problem anymore.) After one power outage we forgot to reprogram the VCR and TiVo caught everything anyway. I can even scan her playlist from the desktop over our wireless network, download whatever she wants to save or show to our kid, and replay it on the desktop monitor. There are many more features that we could use, but we don't need to. I spend zero time playing with the TiVo and spouse has maybe one question or glitch a month. It's always been resolved within a few minutes.

    I've never been a big TV watcher but I could sit down and waste 30 minutes checking channels. Now I only watch what I want to watch (hardly anything) and I can do it at my convenience. Spouse zaps through commercials in about five seconds and gets through an hour show in ~45 minutes. If you have an evening TV routine, you can get continue it the way you do now. Or you can let TiVo start recording while you do other things, then you drop in 20 minutes later and catch up as you fast-forward through the commercials. You'll finish the show about the same time as TiVo. Or you could go do something else with your evening and catch up on it another day. For a football game you'd give TiVo nearly an hour's head start and then catch up by skipping the commercials.

    We avoided TiVo for at least five years because it was "too expensive" and because it seemed to be an unreliable hassle (like maintaining a Windows PC). Now I wish we'd switched years ago.

    How much is your time worth? When you add up the hours you save by skipping commercials, and consider that you never have to miss a show or be at the TV at a certain time, TiVo quickly pays for itself. You get a lot of your life back to work out, catch up on chores, spend more time on HawaiiThreads.com, and generally be more productive... without having to give up the TV you care to watch.
    Youth may be wasted on the young, but retirement is wasted on the old.
    Live like you're dying, invest like you're immortal.
    We grow old if we stop playing, but it's never too late to have a happy childhood.
    Forget about who you were-- discover who you are.

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    • #17
      Re: TV guides

      Nords: *sigh* Well, fine, when you put it like that...

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