8 ms·

I never thought of the DVR as a particularly significant development. I thought of it as just a replacement for the VCR. That's what it was for me. But perhaps

by bloak 1mo ago

I never thought of the DVR as a particularly significant development. I thought of it as just a replacement for the VCR. That's what it was for me. But perhaps in some areas DVRs were used to a greater extent than VCRs had been?

nuclearnicer 1mo ago
Yeah, I readily concede it's lesser. For me it was the moment that we stopped watching a particular thing and discussing it the next day. But maybe that's more personal biography than sociology.
chasd00 1mo ago
Tivo made it very easy and drove the DVR thing IMO. The whole "programming a vcr" was a meme back in the day for something overly confusing.
SoftTalker 1mo ago
Better quality recording than tapes, and easier (for many people) to program.
ssl-3 1mo ago
When I still lived with my parents around the turn of the century, we had a Tivo DVR that talked directly with their DirecTV system's dish. The Tivo was dual-tuner and could do things like record one thing while letting a person watch a different live thing, or it could record two things if the human wasn't watching anything live. In those pre-streaming days, it would often occupy itself by filling otherwise-empty hard drive space with stuff that people might want to watch at a time of their choosing -- based on previous and simple Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down inputs from the handheld remote. In this way, it generally had stuff recorded and available for viewing 24/7 that people in the house might actually want to watch, at just the cost of some otherwise-idle machine time and some simple user ratings to direct it. At that time, it was a very neat DVR with very thoughtful features that were implemented in smart ways. I wanted to watch THX-1138, which was supposed to be George Lucas's first feature-length film. It was somewhat obscure; I couldn't find it to rent locally. I couldn't find it in the published schedules for the premium channels we had, either. I could have bought a new copy, maybe, but IIRC even that was problematic. This whole Internet thing was still mostly confined to the old-web era and inexpensively mass-produced DVDs hadn't entered the era of ubiquity. So I told the Tivo DVR to record that film, anyway, without further instruction. Despite knowing that it was hard (mabe impossible!) to find on-air: I just gave it the name and told it to make it so. And as unlikely as that seemed to me at that time: It did. It took months for it to find THX-1138. When it was eventually scheduled to be aired (one time, in the middle of the night): It made that recording a priority, executed that recording without flaw, and kept that recording so I could watch it later. That was gold. VCRs never, ever did that stuff. (Most other DVRs never did, either.)

by bloak 1mo ago

nuclearnicer 1mo ago

Yeah, I readily concede it's lesser. For me it was the moment that we stopped watching a particular thing and discussing it the next day. But maybe that's more personal biography than sociology.

chasd00 1mo ago

Tivo made it very easy and drove the DVR thing IMO. The whole "programming a vcr" was a meme back in the day for something overly confusing.

SoftTalker 1mo ago

Better quality recording than tapes, and easier (for many people) to program.

ssl-3 1mo ago

When I still lived with my parents around the turn of the century, we had a Tivo DVR that talked directly with their DirecTV system's dish. The Tivo was dual-tuner and could do things like record one thing while letting a person watch a different live thing, or it could record two things if the human wasn't watching anything live. In those pre-streaming days, it would often occupy itself by filling otherwise-empty hard drive space with stuff that people might want to watch at a time of their choosing -- based on previous and simple Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down inputs from the handheld remote. In this way, it generally had stuff recorded and available for viewing 24/7 that people in the house might actually want to watch, at just the cost of some otherwise-idle machine time and some simple user ratings to direct it. At that time, it was a very neat DVR with very thoughtful features that were implemented in smart ways. I wanted to watch THX-1138, which was supposed to be George Lucas's first feature-length film. It was somewhat obscure; I couldn't find it to rent locally. I couldn't find it in the published schedules for the premium channels we had, either. I could have bought a new copy, maybe, but IIRC even that was problematic. This whole Internet thing was still mostly confined to the old-web era and inexpensively mass-produced DVDs hadn't entered the era of ubiquity. So I told the Tivo DVR to record that film, anyway, without further instruction. Despite knowing that it was hard (mabe impossible!) to find on-air: I just gave it the name and told it to make it so. And as unlikely as that seemed to me at that time: It did. It took months for it to find THX-1138. When it was eventually scheduled to be aired (one time, in the middle of the night): It made that recording a priority, executed that recording without flaw, and kept that recording so I could watch it later. That was gold. VCRs never, ever did that stuff. (Most other DVRs never did, either.)