COUCH POTATO

After filling up my disk with dozens of freely available videos in the course of a couple of weeks, I started to look around for a management software. Ideally, it would let me choose between available recordings, and, if space got tight, automatically and gracefully remove the old stuff that I hadn’t watched for weeks. In other words: I needed a Tivo. This digital video recorder (DVR) by the manufacturer of the same name and its clones are icons of US TV recording culture – ask any kid. The Tivo boxes have an easy to use interface that lets users record TV programs on disk for viewing some time later and skipping unwanted commercials. And instead of randomly turning on the TV and surfing channels, you select from a stack of programs previously recorded by the Tivo. With this “time-shifting” technology, viewers cut themselves loose from the broadcasting schedule and watch TV when they have the time.