As we all know, I love television. A little too much. I sometimes act in television, my day job is in television, I watch a lot of television; hell, one of my favorite RPG's is based on my favorite TV show. TV is part of my DNA, part of my outlook. But, there's one (relatively new) aspect of television I'm not up on.
I don't have a TiVo.
No, I don't have a DVR either. My friends and acquaintances who learn this about me usually give the same litany of responses:
"Oh, it'll change your life."
"I can't believe YOU don't have one."
"It's not much more than what you're paying for cable right now."
"It's so great, you should totally get it!"
Let me answer these one by one: "I'm sure", "Weirder things have happened", "Actually, no" and "I will someday." My financial priorities are (1) get rid of my debt, (2) build up savings and investments and (3) eventually buy a house. So, right now, the option of getting a TiVo doesn't really matter to me. I get a good amount of the television I want (Bravo, Food Network, MSNBC, E!, SciFi, TLC, Cartoon Network) and plenty I don't (Fox News, Galavision, the Golf Channel... I mean, seriously). I negotiate through the dreck to get to the good stuff and anything else that I do want to see, I can rent.
The argument some make of the cost -- "It's not that much more than what you're paying for cable right now" -- doesn't hold water with me. See, Adelphia was are cable provider since Tom and I moved in here in 2000, and we have a very low rate. When Adelpia went belly up a couple years ago and Time Warner took over, they had to continue our rate as it is. I'm still getting the channels I want for cheap; if it ain't broke, why fix it?
The hidden portion of the cost argument for TiVo is "It's not that much more than what you're paying for cable right now" is "I'm assuming you're paying for what I'm paying for and that means you have HBO and Showtime." Well, I haven't had either since I lived with my folks back in college. And I don't miss them. And here's another confession: I'm not all that impressed with the HBO shows. What I've seen of Six Feet Under is the exception here: I like that show, and will watch more of it from Netflix. The Sopranos? Overrated. Sex and the City? Fun, but it took me a looooooong time for me to get into that show and it was only after it aired on TBS that I could see the appeal. [And no, I have not watched The Wire, and I'm told it's brilliant. It's on my queue, so relax.]
It goes down to this for me: the characters are people I fundamentally don't like. The Sopranos? They are a bunch of self-centered amoral louts who kill people. The first season was fun and tightly written, and I whipped through it pretty quickly. The second season was a total slog. It hit me: "Why am I spending time with all these assholes?" After I finished that season, I mailed off the last disc and felt relieved I would never have to be around these losers again. Entourage? I watched 3 episodes and had had enough. Trust me, I live in Los Angeles. I see plenty of these shallow, self-centered douchebags every day; the last thing I want to do is watch a show that celebrates them. Rome was okay, but at least it's done as more of a historic melodrama where you have good guys and bad guys.
The same can be said for the Showtime shows I've seen. The American Queer As Folk I turned off after the pilot 'cause I hated all the characters and found it very tedious. I've seen one episode of Weeds, and was not impressed at all. I'm sure some of my opposition is my zero tolerance drug policy, but again, it goes back to the characters. Do I want to spend time with these people? The answer with all of the examples above is no. The TV shows that I like are populated with characters whose company I thoroughly enjoy. Cheers? Hell yeah. Buffy? Of course! As Time Goes By? Any time! I deal with assholes and idiots every day; why would I want to take my leisure time to subject myself to more douches? There are shows where the characters do make mistakes and do err but are still entertaining and the characters are likable where I care about them correcting themselves (Brothers And Sisters, I'm looking in your direction). But, if I think the characters are all jerks, why would I care about them at all? If I have written them off in the beginning as assholes, I'm not invested in them improving themselves (Tony Soprano, et al).
So, I have the shows I like and the shows I want to watch. Throwing a hard drive with R2D2 noises into the mix doesn't really make sense to me right now. I will probably get a TiVo or a DVR a few years down the road, but not right now. I mean, I don't have an iPod either, and that's a bit of a higher priority.
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