Why Watching TV on Your Media Center Changes Everything

If you have no previous experience with a digital video recorder, or DVR, you should be forewarned that you're about to experience a level of freedom, convenience, and control over your television that is very likely to exceed your wildest expectations. The first such appliances to bring VCR-like control to live TV watching were called TiVo and ReplayTV, and they have elicited fierce customer loyalty in the few short years since they appeared on the market.

For more details on how DVRs and related devices work ”and how to make them do what you want them to do ”check out High Tech Toys For Your TV: Secrets of TiVo, Xbox, ReplayTV, UltimateTV and More , by Steve Kovsky, also published by Que (ISBN: 0-7897-2668-8).

Through the crafty design of new hardware and software systems that were able to record and store, or "buffer," video in real-time, these new devices were able to give consumers capabilities that only TV studios could have afforded as late as the early 1990s ”namely, the capability to treat live broadcast video as if it were a videotape. It no longer costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a machine that allows you to pause a live video feed, back it up, fast-forward it, or delay it ”that is, to watch video that was broadcast a few moments ago and continue to view it while you simultaneously record it.

A Few Words on Time-Shifting

How this wonder of video manipulation was extracted from TV production studios and implanted into our living rooms is not as important as what it allows us to do. Using the time-delay features, also known as time-shifting, in a very real sense actually gives us back time.

Consider that in a typical hour of primetime network TV programming, almost one-third of the time is devoted to commercials. What if your television could give you back 20 minutes on the hour, allowing you to condense your favorite one- hour TV drama into 40 minutes?

Ironically, a surprising number of people who don't own a DVR say they don't want one, either ”because they believe it would cause them to spend more time watching TV. In fact, however, most people who own one will attest that a DVR is a great time-saving device. It allows you to watch what you want, when you want, without sitting through commercials if you don't want to. The TV networks may not like the idea, but DVRs such as TiVo, ReplayTV, UltimateTV, or XP Media Center Edition place the viewers in charge of their television viewing experience, allowing them to see more of what they want to see, and none of what they don't want to see. The final result is less time spent watching unwanted, uninteresting material. For many of us, that means less time watching TV in general, and a more satisfying TV-watching experience overall.

How much time could watching digitally recorded TV ”and flipping past commercials ”save you in a year? According to Table 6.1, if you watch only 3 hours of TV each week, commercials consume up to 3.6 days of your life every year. If you watch an average of 3 hours per day, more than 2 weeks out of every 52 are spent watching commercials! What are 2 weeks of your life worth to you?

Table 6.1. Skip the Ads, Reclaim Your Life

Total TV Watching Time	5 Hours per Week	10 Hours per Week	15 Hours per Week	20 Hours per Week
Time Spent Watching Program Content Each Week	3.3 Hours	6.7 Hours	10.0 Hours	13.3 Hours
Time Spent Watching Ads Each Week	1.7 Hours	3.3 Hours	5.0 Hours	6.7 Hours
Time Spent Watching Ads Each Year	3.7 Days	7.2 Days	10.8 Days	14.5 Days