Joe Lavin

The tough part is that none of these units like to communicate with each other. The DVR's directions asked me specifically not to hook it up to a television through a DVD player. It must be hooked directly to the television, or else bad things will happen. The DVD player, meanwhile, also insisted on being connected directly to the television and never through a cable or satellite box. I get the feeling that the DVR people actually view the DVD people as competition and want to make it as difficult as possible for the two units to work together. If you're a DVR company, you don't want to lose market share to somebody watching "The Dukes of Hazzard" on DVD.

And so I spent most of Christmas trying to hook up all the different boxes in the simplest way possible for my mother, and I think I succeeded. For the most part, she is faring pretty well with all the new technology, although she did have a little trouble pausing a movie until she learned that she could just hit the "eleven" key. She is doing much better with technology than last year, when she informed me that she was thinking of buying me an iHop for Christmas -- you know, one of those portable music devices from Apple. All I wanted was to listen to some MP3s on my way to work, and I almost ended up a pancake house franchisee.

Still, I'm not too worried. This is a woman trained on IBM punch card computing from the 1960s, so I think she can handle anything this decade throws at her. So far, she loves the DVR and is happy that she can now watch as many crime dramas as she wants. I even showed her how to set it up so that it can record every episode of "CSI" and "Law and Order." Then again, maybe this isn't such a great idea. The thing can only record 100 hours, after all. I figure it'll run out of space after about three days while trying to record "CSI SUV: Woonsocket," the exciting new drama about hit and run accidents involving sport utility vehicles in Rhode Island.

Amidst all this, I have decided that I would like to buy a Tivo for myself. I've even come up with this prize-winning rationalization: I have convinced myself that buying a Tivo would save me time because I wouldn't have to watch commercials. Somehow, even though I would have a Tivo that would now happily record all the shows I can never remember to watch, I still think that I would be suddenly more productive. I believe I used the same argument to convince myself to buy high-speed Internet access -- think of all the time I will save not having to wait for web pages to load! -- and we all know how that turned out.

Admittedly, it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. For example, I hear some people actually start watching sporting events about forty-five minutes late in order to cut out all the commercials, and they can still watch the end of the games live. I'm looking forward to doing that with Red Sox games. As much as I love baseball, I suspect that during some games I could watch all the exciting parts in about 20 minutes. (Actually, after the events of the last few months, it's looking like I might be able to Tivo the entire upcoming season into a few hours.)

Then again, maybe I should wait a few years until DVR technology becomes even more advanced and can be used in real life. There are all sorts of people in this world on whom I'd love to use the "eleven" button.