TV SEASON IS APPROACHING

Oh boy, my Tivo is booked solid with shows. I'm going to have a lot of trouble keeping up with all the new tv that's coming on. Real World starts this week, for example.

Tivo is smart enough not to record ALL 25000 showings of Real World this week. It's set to only record the first runs.

MTV (and HBO somtimes, I've started to notice) does something pretty slimy to up its viewership. They will start shows either 5 minutes too early or 5 minutes too late (i.e. not on :00 or :30, but on :55, :05, :25, :35). You're stuck in the rut of MTV because you don't want to switch over to another show where you've missed 5-10 minutes out of the 20 minutes of actual commercial-free programming. This causes havock with trying to record MTV programs because Tivo goes by the stated schedule (which says: Real World comes on at 8:00!). So I miss 5 minutes of the show (usually the last five minutes).

All is not lost, however... I can tell Tivo to pad the show on either end (i.e start recording at 7:55 and stop recording at 8:35). This works well unless I have a show that starts at 8:30. Tivo barks at me about conflicting schedules.

I've hacked my tivo to give it Ethernet access. Tivo runs Linux, so it's easy to get in there and mess around. In fact, there are already tons of tools out there that let you do things like program your Tivo over the Internet, post your "Now Showing" list online, and create digital movies off of recorded shows... If I combine the last one with my Mac's DVD writer.... Well, I could archive all my Cirque du Soleil and Eco-Challenge shows that have been festering on my Tivo's drive since I've owned it.

Boy is my life shallow.