My Love/Hate Affair with the DVR

Don’t get me wrong. I love my DVR. It does so many things for me that I can’t do for myself, like record my favorite shows when I’m not home to do it myself. For example, I am an Olympics freak, but when the Olympics were in Beijing the times they were on the television were strange times. I was either asleep or needed to be asleep, or I was out at work or doing things with my family. Regardless of where else I had to be, the DVR had my back, taking care of start and stop times, and doing it all in clear HD. What else could a man ask for from his electronics? But there is a dark side to the DVR as well, pretty cleverly hidden until you’ve had it long enough to rely on it. That’s how it gets you. And in that dark side, there are two distinct sith lords (for all you non-Star Wars fans out there reading this, it just means two pretty bad things) that control my world when I use the DVR.

Of course it meant if you were a fan of both Blossom and Murphy Brown, you could only keep up with one or the other…

1. It can record two shows at the same time. I know at first that this seems like a positive development (don’t even get me started on the Hopper), and it can be on occasion, but overall this is evil. Think about it. Back in the olden times, if you wanted to watch a show but you weren’t around to see it when it happened, you could set your VCR to tape it. But there was no way you could get your VCR to tape competing shows on different networks. It saved time because all you had to catch up on was the one show you copied. And the same was true for all other showtimes you could encounter. Of course it meant if you were a fan of both Blossom and Murphy Brown, you could only keep up with one or the other, or alternate which one you watched on Monday nights at nine. But it kept things sane, and now you can see all seasons of both shows on DVD. Now, though, with the DVR, I can keep up with both New Girl and Go On on Tuesday nights. My problem is that I don’t get a chance to watch either show on Tuesday night, or on Wednesday or Thursday (when American Idol is on), so I often don’t get to see either one until the weekend, or later, depending on what else has been building up on the DVR. It’s never ending, and I feel like I can never keep up. All because it can record two shows at once.

Knowing that it’s no longer special and I can now see it anytime I want dulls the experience for me.

2. My base for fandom is now saturated by all the shows I get to see. Before I had the DVR, things were easy. I was a fan of Desperate Housewives because it was the only show I saw at nine o’clock on Sunday nights. I lived for it to come on each week, and I was rewarded when it was. Then I would have to wait for another week and the anticipation would build up. But knowing that it will still be there for me whenever I want to see it makes me less likely to click on it in the DVR list. Did you follow that? Knowing that it’s no longer special and I can now see it anytime I want dulls the experience for me. So the show can be as amazing as ever, but I’m not as thrilled each time I see it. This is classic saturation at its best, something that would only happen to me when I would set the VCR to copy Days of Our Lives for a whole week before I watched all the episodes on Saturday night for the week. But now it happens all the time for pretty much all of my favorite shows.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my DVR. But I hate it too, because it gives me way too many choices, and it takes away a lot of my anticipation. Funny story. I was talking with one of my work colleagues the other day about some TV show. I think it was Modern Family, and she asked me what day of the week it aired. I honestly had no idea. That’s sad. But that’s DVR.

Sam