DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) have all but taken over these days. Heck, if there was a church celebrating this tremendous invention, I’d likely be calling myself Reverend Matt. But how do these units affect people in the long term? Well, some might point to the recent skit that was presented by Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken. We start off with some young single guy (much like yours truly) sitting there on the couch enjoying the abilities of his new TiVo box. As the skit progresses, we begin to see how this killer-app has just about taken over his life completely. He loses his girl, his job, and not too much longer after that - his sanity. My favorite part was where the TiVo-man hops out of the TV set toting a little baseball bat. As he walks over to his victim, you can actually hear the TiVo button sounds with each passing step. It was a real riot to watch. There is something that really hit home for me about that skit. But as a TiVo owner myself, I never had any problems with the little TiVo-man that lives in my television. As it turns out, my unit’s little TiVo dude was so talented with his bat, that I managed to pull a few strings and got him a job as a hitter for the Seattle Mariners. A while back, the TiVo-man actually had a rather entertaining verbal exchange with a referee during one specific Mariners game; “Forget you, Mr. referee-man! Don’t lecture me about instant replay, I’m a freakin’ TiVo! I redefined instant replay, fool!” A few hours after the arguement, the ref was discovered in a dumpster with a rather infected ‘thumbs down‘ icon branded onto his forehead. TiVo-man was questioned about the assault, but no charges ever came to pass.

Life for TiVo-man appears to be going well despite his tendencies torward blowing up into a blinding homicidal rage. TiVo the company, on the other hand, has not been quite so lucky. It appears that it might be in for some real competition from the one company that many felt was keeping its business on life support - DirecTV. It seems that it is done waiting for it to join the rest of the world in ‘modern DVR-land.’ Speaking for myself, I am really fed up with the phone line across the floor, lack of ethernet access, and offering jack-squat for updates. Being that I refuse to give Comcast my TV dollars, I am glad that DirecTV has opted to take the bull by the horns in order to solve this DVR dilemma. Yes, folks, I’d sooner deal with my TiVo frustrations than go cable ever again (speaking in regards to Comcast specifically).

Thankfully, DirecTV is going to be offering a DVR that will not only meet with my home networking needs, but also offer up some long overdue new interactive features that have been available with other services for some time now. Thank goodness for the free world market.