So I was perusing CNN this morning, like any other morning, and came across this term "Tivo Guilt" on their poll. I was like, what is that? So like every avg. person out there, I googled it. Google came up with a bunch of results that are from bloggers posting about their opinion about CNN"s article on Tivo Guilt, all within the last 24 hours. Its not everyday that you see a news reporting company become the news on the blogosphere because of something they reported about.
So what is Tivo Guilt? Although not clearly defined, Brad Berens (interviewed by CNN) from Mediavorous.com explain it as "You want to watch TV, and what do you have? You turn on your DVR and you have a homework assignment".
Although I was an early adopter of Tivo (Disclosure: I own shares of Tivo) , and then switch to a DirecTivo not long after I got DirecTV, I never suffer Tivo Guilt as further explained in the article as deciding on which shows to delete from the Tivo. Its true that I hacked both my original Tivo and my DirecTivo by upgrading the hard drive so I had at least 5x as much capacity on my Tivo then the regular Tivo user, so deleting things was never really an issue for me.
What really was an issue was deciding what to watch. Like many Tivo users, I would have shows that date back weeks, if not months, from the original air date. I remember perusing through the list and spending at least 15 minutes deciding on what to watch. If that's part of the definition of Tivo Guilt, then I was a sufferer at one point as well.
When I moved more than 2 yrs ago, I lived in an apartment and can no longer get DirecTV. I tried the DVR from RCN (the local cable operator in the area), and that box was absolute crap compared to Tivo. The interface was absolutely useless, not to mention, the box crashed every so often, well, let me keep this post on topic.
As good as Tivo was at the time, looking back, I'm actually glad I no longer use it, or any DVR. The decision on what to watch every night was a hard one, and it just builds as time progresses. Fortunately, about the time that I dropped Tivo, watching TV online started to become popular, and eventually mainstream, first with Joost, then Hulu (and Netflix).
I have always had a computer connected to my TV going back almost 10 yrs. What was once a horrible and useless way to surf the web (with the eye-blinding Standard Defintion) has now become a viable option of surfing the web and now watching TV on the web. I really didn't miss my Tivo. Joost and now Hulu, has replace Tivo in my life. The quality of both are still not up to par with a HD broadcast, but its getting better (and Netflix is actually very close to DVD quality).
So the 2nd part of this post, the concept of Eventness. On my previous post, I wrote about how free time has been robbed from all of us, and I mainly blame the internet for enabling it. The free time that we all have left, we all end up spending it on different things. Other than the Superbowl, or some horrific news event, we as a species have diverse our interest to an extreme level. Everything from a main topic, can be broken up to a niche market. An example is baseball, the American favorite pastime can now be broken up into fantasy baseball, live games, historical games, news about the players, news about the fans, and news about the owners. I'm sure there's more, but imagine, you further divide one group, let's say, fantasy baseball, into different web sites (hundreds of them) that have their own fantasy leagues, and then you see how everyone can have a very specific, non-relatable interest and experience.
That's what eventness is about. Eventness (again from Brad Berens), is about "the unrepeatable qualities of events that happen in real time and sometimes space with other people, as opposed to the endless repeatability of watching on-demand media alone". My understanding of that is watching a movie in a theater vs. watching it at home by yourself on DVD (or online or Blu-ray, however you consume your media).
This is how Tivo killed Eventness for TV:
"Hey, did you watch the last episode of Heroes?"
"No. Its on my Tivo. Don't talk to me (about anything that happened in that episode)."
Well, this phenomenon did not start w/ Tivo. It happened before with the VCR, but Tivo (and DVRs in general) made it so much easier to collect shows for later viewing. Remember the old joke that ppl have about not knowing how to set the VCR clock? Well, let just say Tivos and DVRs are way smarter than a VCR (it doesn't require you to set the clock) and with the help of cable and satellite as a distribution outlet, they have become way more prevalent (at least for time-delay viewing purposes).
So other than a discussion of my opinion of this whole matter, what am I really trying to get at?
I think I have point this out years ago, but let me bring it back, again. Why can't Tivo just create something called "My Channel" which basically and constantly plays whatever you have recorded on your Tivo. That way, you don't have decide on what you want to watch, cuz that's already done for you.
But its been a few years, so let me expand that idea further. Instead of 1 channel, you can have several, and they are all compile by interests, keywords, or even better, keywords by the Tivo audience.
Yeah, Tivo can use a whole revamp in their interface. I haven't had a Tivo in a few years, but I think they still have a very similar interface to the one they had almost 10 yrs ago. It isn't that the interface is bad, its just that they can do so much more w/ it.
I know that you can order pizza now. But my idea is the whole interactive part of it. Since they are more connected than ever now w/ Dominoes, Netflix, Amazon Unbox, they can easier add a social component to it. Here's a few ideas:
-A chat room for every show, that's like the spot for everyone that just watch the show to discuss about it.
-Have a few moderators highlight the best quotes from the users, share that on the episode page, add a rating system and it becomes reviews of the episode, kinda like Yelp.
-Work with ad companies to supply ads that are related to the show (the car the character was driving, the bag that character was carrying), and provide a list of location local to the user where they can buy or try the item.
-let user create clips (limit it to 90 seconds) and let them email to their poor friends that don't have Tivo. At least that way, they can still share the eventness even if they don't or can't watch that program.
Almost all of this is already available in some form via the web and Hulu. It just isn't put together in one useable package. There's still the whole issue of having a keyboard in the living room. While I'm fine w/ it, I don't think I'm in the majority. Maybe they can use some voice recognition software, and built a mic into the remote. I heard a voice-recog. app is working pretty well on the iPhone, so why not on the Tivo?
Too bad Tivo just doesn't have the corporate size to work on something like this. Its also a recession market right now, so I doubt they want to do major modifications like this.
But many people have been saying this for over 10 yrs, who will dominate the living room? Is it MS, is it Sony? So far, it is the Wii, at least for videogames.
But at the very least, lets help end Tivo guilt. Just hook up Hulu to Tivo already. If they delete it from Hulu (which sucks, but they do), you probably not gonna watch it anyway.
Ah, putting the "Eventness" back into our increasingly disparate lives. It's a good idea. This whole situation with our experiences becoming unsharable with others is one of the key points brought up in "Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz. A twitter friend of mine (who I have much respect for: http://peijinchen.com/blog/) recently told me that I Have to read it. I bet you'd like it too.
Posted by: Chinkerfly | December 08, 2008 at 10:19 PM