I'm a Tivo Man »
About six weeks ago (probably a bit longer, but it's not all that important), I broke down and bought a Tivo off of eBay. When it arrived, we found that it had a bit of subscription left from the prior owner, which allowed us to test out the service while deciding if we wanted to spend the money. After about two days, we made our decision.
While we still watch about the same amount of television, time-wise (usually an hour or two per night, and a bit on the weekends), we watch a much larger amount of television in that time, being able to fast-foward through commercials and such.
In recent weeks we have even started recording the football games when they start, and then taking our time with lunch or a leisurely Sunday drive, picking up about 2:15 to 2:30 (for a 1pm game). Amazingly, by just fast-forwarding through the commercial breaks and halftime, we can usually catch up to "real time" within just a few minutes of the end of the game. If we decide to skip all the replays (except the good ones) too, then we can watch a three-hour game in an hour or so. Very nice.
I think the best thing is that we can actually watch shows that we like, rather than surfing to find something on. So instead of complaining about what's on, we have all sorts of things that are just sitting and waiting for us to watch. I haven't quite decided what to do about movies yet, but we'll get there eventually. For now I'm just saving those I want to keep to a hard drive on the network, which I can then use to send the movies back to the Tivo if we want to watch them. Not quite a true media server, but it's not bad.
