Dual Tuner TiVo Nirvana

I love my TiVo. I love the sounds it makes, and the power it gives me to pause, rewind, and fast-forward TV, and to automatically record all my favorite shows. It is one third of the Holy Trinity of consumer technology at whose altar I have worshipped daily for years now - PowerBook, Treo and TiVo. I'd be lost without any of them, and would metaphysically implode without all three.

But now I love TiVo even more. With the pending arrival of RoboBaby, my parenting partner and I made the oh-so-wise choice of snagging a brand new 80 Hour Dual Tuner TiVo - which is on sale for a mere $80 on Amazon (after a $150 rebate). It's the same as your standard Series2 TiVo, except that it not only adds an Ethernet port (so you can connect it to the internet via your router without an adapter, unleashing all sorts of cool new features) - it lets you record two shows at the same time. Like, for instance, America's Next Top Model and Alias. Or American Idol and Lost. Previously, the only way out of such conflicts (other than owning a DirecTV TiVo) was to either stay home and watch one show live while TiVo'ing the other, or manually program something as archaic as a VCR to record the other show (and either way, you'd have to install a cable splitter to do so). But now? Problem solved. And on top of that, you can now TiVo a show in the background while watching something else in the foreground (with the ability to pause, rewind, fast-forward). Or you could be recording two shows simultaneously, while watching a third, pre-recorded show. How cool is that?

This, my friends, is what the 21st Century is all about. Sure, there's still the Series3 HDTV TiVo looming on the horizon, but in the meantime, for most people, this is the most elegant, powerful, affordable solution to all your TV viewing needs - and, I gotta say, a must-have if you're a parent whose life laughs back at you if you attempt to schedule it around your favorite shows. Now you can schedule your favorite shows - all of them! - around your life. As it should be.

P.S.: If you buy one, please enter my e-mail address (paul[at]perchance[dot]com) when you activate it and I'll get TiVo points for referring you. ;-)