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TV Will Bring Us Together

One of the great things of having a computer genius/nerd as a boyfriend is that I benefit from all of the crazy computer skills (Napoleon Dynamite was right about that one), my favorite being the DVR-like computer he built for recording TV shows. The program is called MythTV, and to me it is a god.

This comes in handy for many reasons, but in particular for me because I'm lame and like to go to sleep around 10:00 (I get up at 6:30 to go to the gym and need all the sleep I can get), I don't get to watch some of my favorite shows while they air, such as Chelsea Lately and Mad Men. So, our little MythTV is my friend and stays up to record my shows. It's so smart--it can even search for later showings of the show if there's a scheduling conflict, so that I don't have to choose between Project Runway and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Whew!

Now, you might be wondering, why is this better than my DVR/TiVo/etc.? I'll tell you why. First, the program is free to use (right, SCL?). Second, the subscription to get TV listings is $20--for a whole year. Third, and best of all, it flags commercials. You read that right; it automatically detects commericals and skips them for you as you watch. Brilliant! This means no having to skip forward manually and risk losing a few riveting seconds of More to Love.

Strangely enough, I have found recording TV actually results in less overall TV viewing for me, mostly because I know it's there waiting for me whenever I want. There's no more urgency. Sometimes I'll binge on a whole week's worth of Bravo reality TV on Saturday, but seriously, there are worse things I could be doing with my time.

Big props to SCL for being such a good cable provider.

1 comment:

  1. Awwww, what a good provider! Netflix is filling this role for me, although the limited number of disks does sometimes require some negotiation between me and the mr.!

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