My TV Archiving Habits Have Changed
Up until this fall, I’ve archived numerous TV shows onto VHS tapes. Survivor and The Amazing Race were two shows that I used to tape religiously, but now I don’t tape either. Why? Well, I never actually watched the tapes, and I finally admitted to myself that converting them over to digital and archiving them on my computer was just never going to happen. Survivor I now just Tivo (but I’m usually home Thursday nights to watch anyway), and TAM I torrent on my computer here at school to watch when I have some spare time. Now, stuff like Prison Break I still record on tapes (as I will 24 when it comes back on) because my dad likes to watch those also and we (at the moment) do not have a DVR upstairs on our HDTV. Maybe getting one from Time Warner wouldn’t be a horrible idea, but my experience with the Comcast iteration was not one of UI glory.
What our Tivo does allow me to do is make digital archives of shows that I’d probably never buy on DVD (and may never even come out). I’ve been working on Legends of the Hidden Temple (an old Nick game show) since we got our Tivo, and I decided tonight to also start getting Flight 29 Down (a current Discovery Kids show). Again, why? Yes, I’ll admit these aren’t going to be things that I watch all that often, but never underestimate the value of having a couple of hours of video burned onto a DVD when a long plane or car trip comes around. Once we get a file server set up, many of these may live there also to be accessible on demand from around our network (you know, stuff like Media Center PCs and Apple’s iTV that we’ve yet to get as of now but are still in the purchasing scope). I may be the only one that ever watches it, and it may only be a couple of times that I ever do, but hey, what good is technology if you can’t play around with it occasionally??