Monday, May 12, 2008
Can ReplayTV really revolutionize television watching? Well, it can do neat stuff like rewind live broadcasts.
Sep 3, 1999 | Thanks to the world's coolest new electronic gizmo, three nights ago I watched a commercial for skin care products five times -- plus twice more in reverse. I watched two song and dance numbers from a Mel Brooks movie on late night TV, as the rest of the movie was being recorded for my viewing pleasure. And, most importantly, I discovered that while the future of television is ready for me, I am not ready for it.
The gadget involved in my investigations into the wonderland of high-tech television is a black box called ReplayTV. The model I got retails for $899. Replay is one of two new digital video recorders -- the other is called Tivo -- that hit electronics stores in April. I first heard about Tivo more than a year ago, when it was still in its early stages of development, and I had been looking forward to the introduction of this new bit of electronic wizardry ever since.
In essence, these new recorders capture television programs on a big hard drive as they are being broadcast. Pause the program, fix yourself a snack, take it up where you left off. With about three clicks of the remote control, you can set it to record "M*A*S*H" reruns every night into eternity. With a few more clicks, you can set up the thing to record every movie starring Kevin Bacon. And, every night, your Replay unit downloads a comprehensive programming guide through the phone line so that you can tell it what you want it to record.
I've been telling everyone I know about these amazing features, but they are not all equally impressed.
A few days ago a friend came over and his eye fell to scanning the sleek Replay box.
"How's your new video recorder working out?" he asked.
I told him it was great, and started enumerating all the cool things it can do.
"So what kind of tapes does it use?" he asked.
"It doesn't actually use tapes."
"Oh, I see," he said, "The tapes aren't out yet."
"No," I said, "It doesn't actually use tapes. It just has a big hard drive that records 14 hours of programming."
"Oh." he said.
We left it at that. I meant to tell him that the sleek black box is a bigger innovation than the video cassette recorder, bigger than cable, bigger even than the remote control. But I figured that might be a little more than he wanted to know, given that he was still stuck on the idea of the missing tapes.
Get Salon in your mailbox!