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If You Like Sports, You Need TiVo
It's true. If you like sports, you really, really need TiVo.
More specifically, you need TiVo with DirecTV. Although if you're getting TiVo at all, even for non-sports-related reasons, it might be best to go ahead and get it with DirecTV, just 'cause.
Anyway.
I had brought up the idea of TiVo to the wife a while ago, mentioning how great it is, and referring her to Athletic Reporter co-creator and Photoshop guru Jameson Simmons (the life of a Photoshop guru, it should be noted, is appreciably better than the life of a draft guru) when she wouldn't believe me. We have two TVs and two VCRs, she would say, and we're doing fine with those. Not an irrational argument. At least, not coming from someone who'd never experienced TiVo.
What you do need, if you get TiVo, is you need to make sure that you can record two programs at once; a DirecTV with TiVo setup will do this automatically, but, I think that if you just get regular TiVo you can only record one thing at a time. Beware of this: if you can only record one thing at once, TiVo is, arguably, not as good as a VCR. Because then you can't TiVo something while you watch something else. You could watch something you'd TiVoed previously, but, you can't watch one thing at TiVo another.
But I can. I've got the DirecTV.
Anyway.
The other thing is that TiVo won't result in you watching more TV, but it will result in you watching BETTER TV. Instead of sitting down, flipping through the channels and settling on "Glengarry Glen Ross" cut up to hell on USA, you sit down and you've got six hours of your favorite shows just sitting there, having been dutifully recorded by TiVo while you weren't even looking.
The funny thing, and this has been covered elsewhere (Patton Oswalt set the standard), is that TiVo will, unless you're reasonably diligent about telling it not to, record stuff for you. It's no skin off your nose; you just delete it. But, it takes what you watch and what you program into it, and decides what it thinks you might like based on that. It's interesting to see what TiVo thinks of you; TiVo thought we were black. Or, liked entertainment aimed at black people; I'm sure TiVo, being a benevolent, non-judgemental sort, doesn't care which. TiVo was nice enough to record for us a movie called "Brown Sugar" with Taye Diggs, which I vaguely remembered being released a year or two ago, and "The Parkers" on UPN. I guess that was because I programmed it to record "Chappelle's Show."
Then, a while later, it recorded a bunch of stuff in Spanish. I have absolutely no explanation whatsoever for this development.
Anyway.
The reason TiVo works great for sports is immediately obvious, and is the reason why TiVo (or any of the other, lesser digital satellite services you might subscribe to if you're a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, puppy-murdering Communist) is great in the first place: you can start watching something you've recorded at any time, even while it's still recording. So, if the Timberwolves game starts at 6:30 pm (as it did Sunday), but you're going to be at your friend Warren's house until about 8:00 pm (as I was Sunday), you can TiVo the game and start watching it the minute you walk in the door instead of having to wait until the game is over, rewinding a videotape, and THEN watching. The value of this cannot be overstated.
Also, TiVo will record any channel you're currently watching, for at least a half-hour. I.e., if you flip on a game, and you watch for five minutes, TiVo has been recording that five minutes and you can go back through it if you so choose. If you've been watching for 35 minutes, the last 30 minutes are available to you. And this will happen even if you're not TiVoing the game; it will happen if you're just watching it like the regular chump that you undoubtedly are.
So, what you can do, particularly if you're watching an unimportant mid-season baseball game or any college basketball game, is leave TiVo on whatever channel the game's on, go back and watch something you've recorded for a half-hour, go back to the game, back TiVo up a half-hour, and start watching the game commercial-free. If and when you catch up to live, just do it again. For incredibly huge events like the Super Bowl or The Masters you probably wouldn't want to do this, but for any other game it's fantastic.
And the thing that's really great, that you don't even realize will be an issue until you get TiVo but very quickly can't live without, is the idea that if you see something you like, you can go right back and watch it again immediately. For instance, during the playoffs yesterday, ABC ran a bit featuring referees throughout the season who had been wired for sound. During one part of it, Tim Duncan was arguing with referee Joe Crawford (Joe, if you're reading this: I don't follow the NBA, and I know who you are. I shouldn't. You're a terrible referee and a horrible person). Duncan said something about "when Devin does x" or "when Devin does y," and Crawford says, "Devin Who?" And Duncan is all, "aw, man, don't be like that..." and Crawford reveals that, no, he's not being like anything, he actually didn't know the Spurs had any players by that name. So the very next highlight is Devin Brown, obviously having been prompted by Duncan, going over to Crawford during a time out and introducing himself.
Without TiVo, I couldn't have watched that three times. Because with a regular ol' VCR, I wouldn't have been taping it. Who tapes a first-round playoff game between two teams he could give a rat's ass about? Nobody, that's who. So, without TiVo, I would have seen it once, and it would have been lost to history.
And what a tragedy that would have been.
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