TiVo: Live from the couch

Photo: Phil Doyle

On assignment: Kim Knight settles in to her day at the office.

Remember how TiVo got Sex and the City's Miranda and Steve back together?

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Things I don't own (in no particular order): An iPod. A digital camera. Broadband. Access to satellite television. A television remote control.

Beats me why, last week, I became the first journalist in the country to officially trial TiVo – an internet connected personal video recorder that lets you watch what you want, when you want.

Confused? Four words: Sex and the City. In season six, episode 76, TiVo was the device that got Steve and Miranda back together (it broke, he fixed it, they moved to Brooklyn, yada yada).

It has featured in South Park and The Simpsons scripts. Last year when David Letterman asked Hillary Clinton for the top 10 reasons she loved America, TiVo made the list.

Like MySky and MyFreeview, it will pause and rewind live television, allow you to programme a "season pass" so you never miss a favourite show, and watch one programme while recording two more. Unlike MySky and MyFreeview, it is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. And on Friday, it arrived in New Zealand.

How did I get it before then? Quite simply, I begged.

I'd like to reassure my employer that I did not spend the entire week on my couch eating popcorn watching television. Once I stood up and walked to the gate to pay for pizza. Obviously I went to the bathroom a couple of times. I decided not to claim overtime for getting up at 5am to watch Campbell Live.

I came into the office, but it was mostly so I could test TiVo's ability to let me programme my viewing remotely (log onto your account from a computer or a mobile phone anywhere in the world and never miss Shortland Street again). Last week, I used a television remote control to buy a movie, check my horoscope and flick through the holiday snaps I had just transferred from laptop to television screen. Hybrid Television Services (one-third owned by TVNZ) is the exclusive licensee for TiVo in New Zealand and Australia. Our launch comes on the back of last year's foray into Oz – an unveiling that had Australian media questioning whether the product really was TV's second coming.

"I'm a gadget junkie but, to be honest, I'm still a TiVo sceptic," wrote the Sydney Morning Herald television critic Michael Idato, questioning the cost of the unit ($920) and expressing concern about bandwidth-gobbling downloads.

In New Zealand the latter has been mitigated – depending how you feel about monopolies. Internationally, TiVo's launch partnerships have involved electronics retailers and pay television services. Here, while you can get a basic package with any internet provider, if you want the bells and whistles and downloads that don't eat your data allowance, you've got to get your broadband exclusively from Telecom. Which is why, a couple of Fridays ago, I found myself lost in 0800-automated-helpline-hell.

I am not very good at new technology. The first time I received a press release on a memory stick, I had to ask a colleague how to use it. "Take the cap off," she instructed. "Plug it into your computer. Don't lose the cap." Why, I asked – will it dry out?

All you need for TiVo is broadband, a UHF aerial in the Freeview high definition coverage area and a television. Two out of three ain't bad, I hummed, as I dialled Telecom.

"What programme does your computer run?" asks the technician when I finally connect to a real person. "Ummm..." I reply, before giving an answer I later discover was completely wrong. Turns out my computer is so old, it has no holes for the broadband plugs. To put it in a way I think tech-geeks will understand, it does not have an Ethernet card. I could take it to a store and get one installed ($40ish). I could attempt a USB-based connection (but Telecom can't talk me through this). Or I could have a cigarette and consider, not for the first time, relocating to a decade that would be more compatible with my current technology needs.

Instead I phone Hybrid TV's public relations people and burst into tears.

"Perfect," they say. "You are a lady Luddite. If we can make this work for you, it will work for anyone."

It takes the cavalry approximately 30 minutes to hook up wireless broadband, connect TiVo into my TV and turn the entirety on. The first thing I see is an ad for Sky TV. This is ironic. I know it's ironic, because on the second night of my TiVo trial, while simultaneously recording Inside New Zealand and Wild Asia, I watched a previously recorded episode of Media 7 and saw Sunday Star-Times books editor and published author Mark Broatch discuss misuse of the word irony. Who says television makes you dumb?

ACTUALLY, there are more than a few studies out there listing the perils of too much TV. Ministry of Education and Sport and Recreation New Zealand guidelines for young people aged between five and 18 years recommend less than two hours a day in front of the box. An ongoing Dunedin birth-to-childhood study implicates television watching as a factor in weight gain, smoking, raised blood cholesterol and poor fitness.

Last year, Kiwis' viewing habits hit an all-time high – an average 181 minutes a day, compared to 170 minutes a decade earlier.

Do we really need another reason to sit on the couch?

Hybrid TV has set a New Zealand sales target of 150,000 TiVo units in the next five years. The company's improbably named chief executive, Robbee Minicola, envisages an "organic" growth model, where sales increase by word of mouth. Her pitch, delivered in an American accent tempered by 23 years in Australia, is quite persuasive.

"People are so addicted to their TiVo because it's sitting there. It's a vestibule of treats for them. These days, nothing waits. The kids, the phone, work, the in-laws – they don't wait. But you know what? TiVo's sitting there and it's waiting. It's waiting for when you are ready."

I don't know if I will ever be ready for The Puckerberry Overlords or seven Chinese news shows in one day – one of the initially hilarious aspects of TiVo is the way it suggests, and then records, things it thinks you'd like to watch based on your previous choices (you can educate it quicker using a simple thumbs up/thumbs down key on your remote).

Even the remote control is a novelty. I haven't used one for five years, after a friend who was dossing on my lounge floor accidentally packed it up and flew it home to New York. Now I've got one that will rewind live television. It will not fast forward. When I asked why not, a company representative looked at me kindly and explained that even TiVo couldn't predict the outcome of the Melbourne Cup.

TiVo does not have access to sport channels, and so far, there is no specific adult content. Minicola says the latter may change with customer demand, "but at this point in time it's not on the cards – they're still going to have to go to the video store for that!"

Or the internet. There are grumblings in cyberworld about the decision to launch exclusively with Telecom. But Minicola says 60% of the country's broadband customers are already with the company. Can she guarantee it won't, one day, start charging TiVo customers for movie, music and television downloads?

"One of the things we said to them was we want to be sure you are not going to stop providing unmetering to our customers, and they made us feel comfortable with their proposition."

She won't reveal the length of the contract. "They are exclusive for the foreseeable future... we don't see our relationship with Telecom as a necessity, we see it as an honour. When we're not exclusive, we'll be honoured to be with every other telco in New Zealand. But we did need a leg up."

It's the downloadable content, delivered via a portal called CASPA, that Minicola is banking on for the long term survival of her product. With a limited population and a one-off cost for the TiVo device (once you've paid for it, you own it) then it's the on-demand library which will be the money maker, either through a direct charge to customers, or by sponsored advertising.

To be honest, during my trial week, the on-demand portal was a bit like choosing movies on a budget airline – there wasn't much I hadn't already seen or felt like paying for. I was assured that, following official launch, new content would be added daily.

The attraction, says Minicola, is that customers will be paying only for what they want to watch. "People using a pay TV service in Australia or New Zealand – the majority of what they're watching is free-to-air anyway, and when you want more than that, you're at the whim, beck and call and decision making process of a company who puts down long-tail, linear content across a number of channels. I prefer to go straight to on demand, pick the show I want and watch it in order."

Dear TiVo: Mix me a cosmo and fetch my slippers next time Sex and the City appears on the electronic programming guide.

TiVo at a glance

What is it: A digital video recorder that lets you (among other features) record two shows while watching a third, previously recorded.

Costs: $920 for the device, wireless adaptor and home networking package.

Who can get it: Anyone with broadband internet, living in a Freeview high-definition coverage area, with a UHF aerial. Extras: To view the on-demand download library, you have to be a Telecom customer.

Competing with: MySky and MyFreeview – compare and contrast at www.skytv.co.nz, www.freeviewnz.co.nz and www.mytivo.co.nz