TIVO anybody?

[Blonde Bomber]

This is the greatest invention since the TV itself...

The only thing I don't like is I wish I could record two shows at once and still watch live TV. Other than that I wondered how I got thru life without it.

I love to be able to watch Mavs games in about an hour..[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

The negative to this is that it leaves more time for yard work [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

[Chicago JK]

Tivo is great. great invention. I believe if you have direct tv that you can record two things at the same time. I am getting direct tv soon, so we shall see. Although, tivo still rocks and it is a must for any tv enthusiast.

[Blonde Bomber]

hmm. I also have DirecTV and Tivo won't allow me to change off the two channels that I'm recording if they are being recorded at the same time.
But I can go and watch other programs that I have allready recorded.

can anybody out there confirm that. I even called TIVO CS and they said that I could not.

Hey Chicago JK...did you get the option for a lifetime membership to TIVO? We just had to send in $150 to get it. Now we don't have to pay the monthly fee of $10. Just wondering if they still offered that.

[Dooby]

I got Tivo a week ago. Last night, I hooked up a mulitswitch so I could record 2 shows at once, or watch one and record another.

Greatest invention ever.

However...have you heard the joke about "My tivo thinks I'm gay"? Well, my tivo thinks I am black. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But I don't watch "Moesha" on a regular basis. And the damn thing keeps recording "Good Times" and "The Jeffersons". I have no explanation for why it does this.

It used to think I was hispanic as it was always recording stuff in spanish. I finally convinced it otherwise.

Is it possible that this is all Mavs related? If it starts recording Ann Murray concerts or "Strang Brew" anything in German, I'll let you know.

[OutletPass]

I have a souped up 190 hour Tivo...with lifetime subscription great for all of the Mavs games and the tour de france...

Love it to DEATH !!

[madape]

Tivo is awesome.

Dooby - I read that "Tivo thinks I'm gay" article in the Wall Street Journal. That's hilarious that it thinks you are black. I don't think it's the Mavericks thing though. I gave basketball games three thumbs up and set up the NBA season pass. I even record shows like Juwanna Mann and Pootie Tang but I still don't have your problem.

My Tivo does regularly record episodes of the X-Files without my permission. Star Trek too. And for reasons I don't want to get into it also thinks I'd be interested in anything starring Shannon Doherty or Jenine Garth.

[Big Boy Laroux]

madape's tivo is indeed quite awesome.

i need to get one...

[Dooby]

Oh no! My TiVo thinks I'm gay

By Jeffrey Zaslow
The Wall Street Journal

Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean.

But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital video-recorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record. A phone call the machine makes to TiVo in San Jose, Calif., once a day provides key information. As these men learned, when TiVo thinks it has you pegged, there's just one way to change its "mind": outfox it.

Iwanyk, 32, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, because it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."

"The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."

He mentioned his TiVo tussle to a friend, who told an executive at CBS' The King of Queens, who then wrote an episode with a My-TiVo-thinks-I'm-gay subplot.

A lot of gadgets and Web sites feature "personalization technologies" that profile consumers by tracking what they watch, listen to or buy. The software, embedded in sites such as Amazon.com and CDNOW.com, then recommends other books, videos and music based on a customer's tastes.

Many consumers appreciate having computers delve into their hearts and heads. But some say it gives them the willies, because the machines either know them too well or make cocksure assumptions about them that are way off base. That's why even TiVo lovers are tempted to hoodwink it -- a phenomenon that was also spoofed this year on another TV show, HBO's The Mind of the Married Man.

Mike Binder, creator and star of that show, had set his home TiVo to record his 1999 movie, The Sex Monster, about a man whose wife becomes bisexual. After that, Binder's TiVo assumed he would enjoy a steady stream of gay programming. Unnerved, he counteracted the onslaught by recording the Playboy Channel and MTV's spring-break bikini coverage. It worked, he says. "My TiVo doesn't look at me funny anymore."

His wife, however, was taken aback when she saw all the half-naked women he was ordering through TiVo. He told her those women meant nothing to him: "I'm just counterprogramming because TiVo thinks I'm gay." She was unamused. The incident inspired an episode of his show.

Though some users contend TiVo has sex on the brain, TiVo's general manager, Brodie Keast, explains that the box is merely "reacting to feedback you give it." Still, the machine employs algorithms -- searching several thousand key details (favorite actors, movie and TV genres) -- that leave some people wondering whether it is judging their predilections.

Karlsson, 26, says he "pre-emptively" found all the religious shows in his TV listings and used the "thumbs down" button on his remote control to tell TiVo he has no interest in them. (Giving three thumbs down is the best way to block a program.) After that, his TiVo recorded movies about creepy homicides. "They all have titles like Murder on Skeleton Isle," says the computer system administrator in Cambridge, Mass.

He uses the "thumbs" button to tell TiVo he hates such films. He also orders cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of him. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer," he says.

Cohen, 30, has a TiVo that mysteriously assumed he wanted Korean news programs. The Philadelphia lawyer gave thumbs down to anything Korean, and his TiVo got the message. Sort of. "The next day, it recorded the Chinese news," he says.

TiVo's 500,000 subscribers use the box primarily to record programs they specifically request, and many laud its ability to pause live broadcasts and record a show's entire season. Still, in TiVo-focused online chat-rooms and in secretive admissions to one another, some say they resent being pigeonholed by TiVo's suggestions.

Like TiVo, other techno-profilers run hard with limited information. Ray Everett-Church of Fremont, Calif., who is gay, ordered Queer as Folk videos from Amazon.com. Understandably, the site began suggesting gay-related calendars and books. Then he bought a baby book for a pregnant friend. So for weeks, the site also recommended parenting books. He says it was as if Amazon.com decided he was "a pregnant gay man."

He fought back, he says, "by inundating it with additional data. I searched for other stuff -- on politics, computers -- so it would stop throwing baby books at me. Now it thinks I've abandoned the baby and I'm preparing for a career in politics."

Everett-Church, a privacy consultant for businesses, predicts that as techno-profiling increases, more people will purposely muck up their profiles. They'll fear ordering books on mental illnesses or sexual preferences because they'll wonder if they'll somehow be publicly identified.

All techno-profiling companies contacted for this article said that information gleaned is for the customer's personal use only. Still, even Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos knows the potential mortification factor.

For a live demonstration before an audience of 500 people, Bezos once logged onto Amazon.com to show how it caters to his interests. The top recommendation it gave him? The DVD for Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity. That popped up because he had previously ordered Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda, a spokesman explains.

Some people have given up trying to manipulate personalization technologies. Dino Leon, a hair-salon owner in Birmingham, Mich., says his TiVo quickly figured out that he and his partner were gay. They were OK with that, but just for fun, they tried to confuse the software by punching in "redneck" programs, like Jerry Springer's talk show.

TiVo wasn't fooled, and kept recording gay shows. Leon believes the box was giving them a message: "You're definitely gay. And you're watching too much TV."