The End of "Appointment TV"
Sunday, September 20, 2009 by mrs jones
With the impending launch of TIVO in New Zealand, cancelling your dinner date because tuning in at 8:30 on a Tuesday night as your favourite show is playing (which is more important) is hugely a thing of the past. VCRs started the revolution, yet relying on myself or my technophobe mum to try to figure out a VCR’s future recording function heavily delayed the impending death of “appointment TV”. – One failed recording of Roswell confirmed that every Tuesday at 8:30, my eyes were glued to the TV set. Fast-forward ten years and people are drastically different in their TV watching patterns – one guy from class doesn’t even have a TV in his house (shock horror!) and the outcome is that water-cooler conversation doesn’t cover what happened last week in Outrageous Fortune (poor Sheryl) it is what is happening or what we hear through the internet. (Obama called Kanye a jackarse! – click here to listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCdDKEFFU7Q) TVbythenumbers has released a study showing that TV watcher numbers are down by 20% and sites like YouTube and Hulu are collecting the dropping numbers. Which makes sense as I personally must know what is the latest goss in Gossip Girl – not the delayed by centuries NZ GG but the up to the very minute GG in America; YouTube is the answer to Generation Ys need of wanting everything now, now, now. Luckily TIVO will be launching in NZ first week of October. Young people (and old) of New Zealand should embrace themselves – it is going to be fantastic. TIVO offers viewers the function to pause rewind and replay live TV, record whole series (perfect for the occasional Sunday omnibus), high def imaging (perfect for viewing Heath Ledger up close and personal), and the ability to record TV and store on an internal hard drive. And yes, this is exactly what MySky offers currently but TIVO also offers broadband movies!* Even TIVO recognizes the move award from appointment TV to the internet. The revolution will also bring families back together. As the sets are so expensive it will be years before households have more than one thus households will sit together in the lounge, ending the days of people hibernating in their rooms to watch TV as let’s face it everyone has at least three or four extra TV sets with Warehouse bunny ears around the house. Mind you as a poor student my household will definitely not be getting a TIVO set for a while – so you might need to hang around for appointment TV to be finally dead.
*Yes, there is a catch – you must be with Telecom.
*Yes, there is a catch – you must be with Telecom.
I'm on exchange here for a semester, and my flat doesn't have a TV. No matter, I haven't missed an episode of anything. I've just been watching all my shows online...for free. I actually do this at home too, especially with the programs that are on channels that cost an extravagant amount of money.
Yes, what's really new (for NZ, that is) is the on-demand content for people who don't want to line Rupert Murdoch's pockets (though they'll have to line Telecom's instead!) rather than the time-shifting capabilities, I think. Pausing and rewinding live TV has been readily available (much more cheaply) via hard disk recorders as well as MySky, though the marketing hype around TiVo would have us believe it's nothing short of a revolution!