onhometheater.com's 2003 Gift-Giving Guide
I'm going to do something a little unusual by recommending
an idea, not specific products. The idea is that television is a black hole when it comes
to time. Time, of course, is the one thing you can't buy. Well, not really.
But you can shift it. And that changes everything.
Time shifting isn't a new idea. The VCR revolutionized the
way people related to TV because of time shifting (and not, in my opinion, because
it allowed people to consume naughty movies in private). Suddenly people could watch the
TV shows they loved and pursue an active social life (or a career, in the case of
soap-opera junkies).
The PVR is simply a more technically advanced,
easier-to-use method of time shifting -- whether you buy a TiVo or RePlay device or just
get a DVD recorder like the Panasonic DMR-E100HS. I
like TiVo's interactive menu features, but they all work more or less the same.
Set your PVR to record your favorite programs and then
don't watch 'em. At all. Let 'em sit.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't use your home theater.
Heaven forbid -- that would put me out of work pretty fast. I think watching movies is
fundamentally different from watching TV -- you usually plan to watch a movie: You
pick a time; you might even invite some friends over. Movies can be a social occasion; TV
is almost always a solitary vice, even when several people do it together.
What I'm proposing is an end to mindless consumption of
broadcast product.
I'm a little behind the curve on this one, since Nielsen
has already declared an 11% reduction in viewership this season. The public is already
turning off their TVs. Some of this is undoubtedly a reaction to the crap we're being
offered (although, to be fair, as bad as this TV season has been, it's not that
much worse than any other year). Some of it is attributable to all the other entertainment
options now available to the consumer -- computer gaming, Web surfing, reading on-line HT
reviews, and so on.
And, I suspect, a lot of it is because we all have ways of
catching up on the truly unmissable shows, and on our own schedules to boot. We have VCRs,
PVRs, and the expectation that anything we really need to see will be out on DVD
eventually.
Need to catch the fourth season of The Sopranos? The
complete season on DVD costs about the same as four months of premium cable. Need to catch
up on The Shield? Why limit your Tuesday evening social life when you can record it
to hard disk and watch all 12 episodes when you want to?
And the real fallout of these options is that TV suddenly
seems a lot less compelling. We can always catch up, if we need to.
The funny thing is that people have been begging for TV to
go away for a long time. Why are the new flat screens so insanely popular? Because people
are tired of living their lives around their TV sets. They don't want 'em dominating their
living spaces and, I suspect, deep in their hearts, they don't want television dominating
their lives.
When the TV is no longer the center of the living room, it
just might no longer be the center of your entertainment life, either. That may be scary
for the networks, but it's good news for the rest of us. For years we TV-aholics have been
saying we can quit anytime. Thanks to products like PVRs, now we really can.
If you've been paying attention, you'll be wondering what I
propose you do once you've recorded all those TV shows you don't have to watch in real
time any more. Why -- record over 'em when the new episodes start again in the New Year,
of course.
You didn't think I'd propose watching any of that rubbish
did you?
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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