So you have your Jeannie Bottle
but now you need your own TiVo genie!
Questions:
1. Have you ever rushed home to catch your favorite situation comedy like I Dream of Jeannie?
2. Do you skip dinner out with friends because you wanted to see the news?
3. Have you ever stayed up too late on a school night to watch Leno or Letterman?
4. Have you ever gotten a telephone call in the middle of your favorite sports event and missed the key play?
5. Did you ever see part of an interesting piece of news on one of those tickers at the bottom of the screen but wondered what the first part was?
6. Have you ever thought of buying Depends because sometimes you just can’t take a moment to run to the bathroom during your favorite program?
7. Have you plopped down on your couch and watched the most useless and uninteresting programs on television because you had nothing better to do?
8. Have you gone to work and heard all about that amazing miniseries that started last night but you forgot all about it?
9. Have you ever wished that you could just see that last sports play or scene again?
10. Do you record things with a VCR only to find you ran out of tape half way through the program you were recording?
11. Does your VCR perpetually flash 12:00 because despite your doctorate degree in computer programming the VCR defies comprehension?
If you are anything like me then you answered yes to most if not all of these questions. There is a real life changing answer to each and everyone of these situations and that is TiVo.
Answers:
1. With TiVo you don’t program anything by time or channel but by program. What that means is that you view a comprehensive TV Guide of programs and press one button to select a program and then you have the option to record just that program or get a Season Pass which means all the episodes of that program will be recorded no matter what time it comes on, whether it appears on that channel or another channel six months from now and you can decide if you want to see just the new episodes or reruns too.
2. TiVo is always on recording the last half hour of whatever channel it is on so when you turn on your television you can always rewind to see the last half hour of a program you are starting live. It also means you can rewind any program to catch something you missed or that you want to see again. You can even replay something in slow motion without any static or jerkiness often associated with VCR recordings.
3. Because you can program up to two weeks in advance or infinitely with the season pass you never have to worry about missing something that you want watch.
4. When you do sit down to watch television you can go to your Now Playing List and know that everything there is something you wanted to watch. You are no longer at the mercy of network program directors because TiVo is 100% television your way on your schedule and only what you want.
5. One of the most powerful features of TiVo is the ability to search by actors such as Barbara Eden. Everything and anything that Barbara Eden appears in whether a series like I Dream of Jeannie or Sabrina the Teenage Witch or an interview talk show Like Larry King Live can be recorded without you having to look for it.
6. Finally, as you record and watch different programs TiVo learns what you like to watch and then it scans through all those hundreds of cable and satellite channels to find things you might want to watch.
Observations:
Perhaps you are thinking I don’t watch that much television so I really don’t need some new gizmo. Well I thought the same thing but once I had TiVo I realized that I watched a lot of junk that I wasn’t really interested in and now I watch less television than before but what I do watch is always something I am very interested in. Did I mention you can fast forward through commercials too? I don’t think this is the biggest selling point for TiVo but the ability to skip the commercials makes a half hour program just 21 minutes and an hour long program around 40 minutes. If you watch two hours of television a day that amounts to 40 minutes a day that you get back which in one year is 243 hours of your life to do something else that you like.
Why Am I Plugging TiVo:
Although TiVo isn’t directly related to I Dream of Jeannie it is very rare that something comes along that changes your life in a real tangible way. To me TiVo is right up there with getting your own Dreamy Jeannie bottle or the invention of the wheel. Although it is hard to realize what a change TiVo can make in your life I assure you that once you have TiVo you will never ever go back to television without one.
To learn more about TiVo click on the TiVo logo in the banner above or the giant TiVo below.
~Hajji
