Converted my sister - TiVo success story

[plmills]

Hello,

Been a member here for a while, but haven't posted before. I thought I'd share my story about converting my Sister to the TiVo lifestyle.

About a year ago, I replaced my original series one 30-hour TiVo with an HR 10-250, purchased from a web-retailer and modified by them to a 2-drive unit, with a total of 800 gigs of storage. That has been a great experience, despite the recent demise of the unit's HDMI port (currently using the component out, which is fine).

I had been telling my sister for a couple of years about how great the TiVo was (she was regularly recording her favorite shows to an old VCR), but, despite demos on my own unit, she wasn't convinced, and remained a major skeptic (it's too expensive, it's too geeky, it's just a slightly improved VCR, I would never just watch pre-recorded shows, I probably can't figure it out, etc., etc., etc.).

Finally, about 4 months ago, I convinced her to let me install my original TiVo in her home. After showing her how to use it, she seemed to like it, but still wasn't open to the idea of watching shows from the now playing list during prime-time hours, when her regular shows were on. I sighed, and quietly resolved to just give her time and hope for the best.

I was speaking to her on the phone yesterday, and she mentioned that she had been watching TV at our Mom's house, and complained about how frustrating it was to watch the Olympics without the freeze and instant replay features of the TiVo, as well as the commercial skipping.

Upon further questioning, she admitted to me that they no longer watch live TV at all, and have totally converted to the TiVo "lifestyle". She mentioned that she couldn't imagine watching TV without her TiVo at this point. Success!

Just thought I would share my story about converting a hard-core live-TV-watching TiVo skeptic to a TiVo fanatic.

PLM

[DancnDude]

Way to go :) It seems there are a lot of stories like this one. People just don't understand how TiVo changes your life until they use one.

[ZeoTiVo]

Nice work :up:

sigh - if only there was a way to get a demo TiVo to everyone (whether they want it or not :p ) The DVR industry would take off at that point and new innovative products would be popping up all over.

as it is many people still think it is just easy as rain to trun on the TV and watch whatever is on at that time. Who needs "yet another gadget" to deal with when watching TV, it will just make it harder to do :rolleyes:
My wife was in that camp and still sometimes has trouble watching behind real time, especially when it is her Football team, during the playoffs she would keep saying "I am going upstairs to find out what the "real" score is.
Still she loves to FF commercials and loves watrching the Olympics by FFing through what does not interest us, like cross country skiing



The same resistence happened with PCs. Who needs that in the house? I deal with a PC at work already. Then email and the internet came along and changed all that resistence for many, many households.
If TiVo had the ability to download Netflix movie catalog, I bet that would melt a lot of resistence as well. sigh**

[annenoe]

I have to admit that I am terribly conflicted now that we have HD. I am absolutely transfixed by Olympics in HD - unbelievable. But because I am a die hard and refuse to leave tivo, I have to watch HD live. It truly is as good as advertised. It is almost impossible to switch back to tivo when I know it's broadcasting in hd.

However, that said, I've started working on my husband and intend to dump DirectTV for Comcast once the Series 3 comes out and everything settles down. What they don't realize is that the feed is the commodity. Tivo is the differentiator - it's the "killer app" for me. I can always find a new feed - I can't (at least now) replace tivo and will jump the minute I can afford a Series 3.