We live too far from town to get cable TV, so we have had satellite television for many, many years. We started out with one of those huge satellite dishes, but like most things electronic they have gotten smaller and more efficient over the years.
This summer we upgraded our old DirecTV to a DVR and are loving it! It is the same concept as TIVO I guess. With a push of a button on the remote, you can record your favorite show (no separate VCR, no tapes, no figuring out how to record or how to set the time) - just push one button! AND if you push that button twice, it records the entire season of that show, forever. Pretty cool.
When the fall TV schedule came out, I promptly went to the TV and programed it to record the few shows we want to see, and even a few new ones we might want to check out. (Some of our favorites are Survivor, Christine, Pushing Daisies, Closer). You might ask why not just mark the calendar and actually watch the shows when they are on? Well, here is the BEST part of the DVR. Just go to your list of recorded programs, click on the one you want to watch, and speed through the commercials. We now watch everything one day late, (except for the news) and it is wonderful. Actually we have even recorded the nightly news and watched it just a little later to avoid all of those dreaded drug commercials!
There is the added perk of pausing live TV - if we actually are watching something as it is broadcast, and we want to go do something important (like make popcorn), just pause it and continue watching it when we return.
Of course, out of the hundreds of channels on satellite, often there is nothing worth watching, so we also subscribe to Netflix and get about 3 movies a week in the mail.
We are definitely couch potatoes, we get up early and work all day and after supper are ready to just veg out on the couch. We usually don't last long, just another reason to record shows. All-in-all, between the DirecTV DVR and Netflix, we always have something to watch out here in the country.
I have finally found a remote that I can use. Who knew there were so many remote possibilities?
