Let’s face it, Internet readers, most of us are guys. And as red-blooded American guys, we all have men’s desires, men’s needs. Don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about. We want it faster, more creative, more imaginative, and not to put too fine a point on it, slimmer. We know we’ll have to pay for it eventually—we always do—but we’d rather not break
bank just for a little nighttime fun. There’s a wide variety out there to choose from, so point us in right direction and we’ll happily engage in hunt. But why do they make us work so hard to get it? Sure, we’re tech-savvy geeks, even nerds, but does that mean everything has to be some huge intellectual puzzle? Is there a way to make these people give up goods with a bare minimum of confusion? I’m talking, of course, about home consumer electronics, specifically satellite television systems.Look, I’m sorry if I led you on, but I hope I’ve provided a more interesting introduction to world of home satellite equipment than most industry vendors have. Take a look, for example—if you dare—at RapidSatellite.com, a one-stop Internet shopping point for satellite TV. A recent search turned up following entries:
DIRECTV DVR80 3-Room 70 Hour DIRECTV DVR Satellite TV System w/ TiVo (1) DVR80 (2) D10 with Standard Dish, Multi-Switch & Standard Installation
DIRECTV DVR80 3-Room 70 Hour DIRECTV DVR Satellite TV System w/ TiVo (1) DVR80 (2) D10 with Triple LNB Dish & Standard Installation
DIRECTV 3-Room 70 Hour DIRECTV DVR System w/ TiVo (2) TiVo Receivers (1) Hughes Director Receiver with Standard Dish, Multi-Switch & Standard Installation
DIRECTV 3-Room System (1) HR10-250 200 Hour (STD) 35 Hour (HDTV) DIRECTV High Definition DVR w/ TiVo (2) DIRECTV Receiver System with Triple LNB Dish & Standard Installation
A little help here? Those ads are about as welcoming as a brick wall, and they present us with more acronyms than U.S. military. For pure reading pleasure, they rank somewhere between Finnegans Wake and book of Leviticus. Am I buying satellite TV service, or naming robots for science fantasy sequels?
Relax, Luke Skywalker. Scanning through orbital space may not be like dusting crops, but we’ll work our way through this thing together. Let’s start with first ad.
DIRECTV DVR80 3-Room 70 Hour DIRECTV DVR Satellite TV System w/ TiVo (1) DVR80 (2) D10 with Standard Dish, Multi-Switch & Standard Installation
Okay, first things first. DirecTV is a national satellite TV subscription service owned by Hughes Electronics and, in large part, Fox Entertainment. In order to watch DirecTV programming, one must first by a dish to collect signals beamed to Earth by satellite. Then one must buy a set-top box to decode those signals. Lastly, one must have a TV of some kind to display imagery represented by those signals. The first ad is trying to sell us a hardware package that’ll allow us to watch DirecTV, but it adds a few nifty bells and whistles. For example, this package includes another device called a DVR80. And what exactly is that? It looks like a license plate.
Good guess! No, a DVR80 is a brand of receiver manufactured and sold by RCA. To be more precise, it receives DirecTV signals as well as TiVo interactions. TiVo is a kind of DVR, or Digital Video Recorder, manufactured by TiVo company. A Digital Video Recorder does exactly what it claims to do: It records video, not on tape as a VHS video recorder would, but as digital data in a dedicated hard drive. The DVR80 is capable of recording up to seventy hours of digital material, just as promised obliquely in ad. What ad doesn’t make clear is that amount of material hard drive can store depends on how detailed information is. Just as a VHS tape can hold anywhere from two to six hours of material, depending on image quality, so do DVR image recordings suffer when recorded at seventy-hour setting. The DVR80 has Dolby Digital sound capability and comes with a universal infrared remote control. When sold separately, it retails for anywhere between $100 and $150.
The comparison to VHS tends to minimize what TiVo can do. The hardware and allows for instant replays of live TV, plus ability to skip through commercials while a program is airing. The Season Pass feature tracks user’s favorite shows, even if they change network time slots, and records them each week automatically. It’s even capable of predicting which unfamiliar shows user might like, based on his or her previous recordings. Simply put, TiVo is neato.
