Here’s the comment I posted on another person’s blog post:
I wouldn’t be able to watch television without my DVR. My kids will watch live television (PBS Kids or Disney Channel) but I never watch television for myself without it being recorded. By the time the kids are in bed chances are I would have missed a show. Or for those nights when there are two shows on at the same time? We are always behind on what we watch. Oh, I smell a blog post.
Because, yeah, we don’t watch live television. Sometimes we’ll watch a show the night after it airs. What did we do before?
Back in the 80s and 90s I had two VCRs for the usual reasons guys in their early 20s have pretty much anything. I would pipe my cable signal directly into the VCR so it would be easy to record stuff on multiple channels at multiple times.
Life was simpler then with one child and fewer commitments. While I always have disliked cable there wasn’t a great alternative for me. Satellite wasn’t able to offer the local stations which I wanted, and sure I could figure out an antenna solution, but having one solution fits my needs. Besides, if cable could provide the local stations why couldn’t satellite?
I was finally able to get rid of cable in 2003 – we were at a home show and some installer of television systems was there trying to get everybody to use his service to upgrade their television experience. While that wasn’t feasible for us I did mention I had always been looking to get satellite, but the deal-breaker was the local station availability. He told me that while in the past a couple of local stations had been available, now all of them would be and my deal breaking requirement for switching to satellite was broken.
Getting rid of cable has made me a much happier television viewer.
When we first got DirecTV we spring for the TiVo service rather than continue with my outdated VCR method of recording shows to watch later. That totally changed the way we watched television. We watched more of it. We were able to record a show on one channel and watch another at the same time or watch one show that was recorded while another show gets recorded. And without the two VCRs there was less equipment under the television, which was nice.
Then a few years later we upgraded to an HD receiver. When that happened we got dropped from TIVo and were given DirecTV’s DVR service. Occasionally it wouldn’t record the right thing, but overall it was just fine. It was still better than having cable.
Being able to press a button and have an entire series get recorded is a major relief for me. I don’t always know when a new season of a show will start, so having it automatically kick in is really nice.
While we are remodeling our house we wound up having to move, if just temporarily. Moving brought about another receiver from DirecTV, an upgrade. Supposedly one that can record 5 shows at once, though I haven’t really had the opportunity to test that out. There’s a lot more hard disc space for storage of shows as well. This is important in my family, as we don’t always get to shows right away. When you have both the kids and parents recording different series, those episodes stack up quick.
Frankly, I don’t know how anybody watches all they want to without having some sort of recording going on. I love my DVR, and I’m a rather satisfied DirecTV customer.