So I’ve had a TIVO since the early days. I bought mine a couple of months after they went on sale. I had been thinking of buying one for some time then one day I walk in to Fry’s Electronics, an electronics retail chain on the West Coast and they are just unloading the TIVO boxes from the pallet. I’m not entirely convinced I want one so I pick it up on a “Fry’s rental policy” (30 day money back, no questions asked guarantee).

I use it for a month and other than the novelty of it I probably watch more TV in that month than I have in a decade. All these great shows stacking up on the hard drive that I normally don’t think to watch and setting the VCR is too much effort.

Yes, my VCR remains at 12:00 (not blinking at me thankfully) not because I don’t understand how to set it but because it’s just not worth it.

I don’t record anything with the VCR, I’d rather have a VCP, but all the play only VCR’s I’ve ever seen have been low-end pieces of junk I wouldn’t give house room to even if it were making cute kitten eyes at me and came with a red bow round it’s neck.

So back to my point, I resolved back in September of 2001 to give up TV.

Now you have to understand I have a high-end projection system hooked up to high-end AV equipment that dominates one wall of my home. I watch a movie a couple of times a month and I play quite a few video games so I like having nice equipment to play them on. The TIVO has been sat in the original box for well over 3 years. The lifetime TIVO service subscription languishing unused.

Finally I take it out of storage intending to sell the machine to my room mate for the original cost of the subscription and I fire up the machine to make sure it still works and the very last programme it recorded, automatically, which I never watched, was on the morning of September 11, 2001, about 5 minutes after the initial attack.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch it…

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