Me and My Guilty PVR

A few months ago, I upgraded my digital cable to one of those fancy-smancy packages, completed with a High Definition Personal Video Recorder – AKA a PVR.

These things are awesome – I can pause, stop and rewind live broadcasts. I can also record about 90-minutes of television, so that I can watch it at another time. Essentially, the PVR is a special kind of digital cable box, one with three digital cable receivers in it and a large hard drive to record shows. The digital receivers allow it to constantly record live shows, while you watch other shows, or to simply play back recorded shows.

Previously, I’d just do the time-shifting thing. I’d catch any programs I missed on another station in a different time zone. I still do that – it’s cool to watch American channels and see the American commercials. Americans have a different sense of humour than us Canucks, and it plays out in their commercials.

But I now suffer what may be a new disease of modern technology – Guilty PVR. I record so many shows on a regular basis, that I have accumulated quite the list on my PVR. So much so, that I often feel guilty about deleting anything, without first watching it.

Sounds silly, but you figure, if I set the thing to record it in the first place, then I must have originally wanted to watch it. And that’s true, just some things – particularly news and current affairs shows – are more interesting closer to the actual events they surround.

Though I also “PVR” many Star Trek shows, and lots of shows off of the Discovery Channel – Discovery rocks. I record movies off the movie network, shows off of Showtime – like Californication, and stuff off HBO. I really enjoy some of the old stuff off of Déjà Vu too, remember Bizarre with John Byner – classic.

Still, I’m so busy during the work week, I don’t get to watch all that I “PVRed” so come the weekend, my PVR is practically burping full. So much so, that I feel the need to sit in front of the television all day, watching nothing else but show after show after . . .

Eventually, my eyes gloss over, my fingers grow numb from the remote, and I decide enough is enough, and I toss the whole PVR out the window . . .

Or so I think sometimes. What usually happens is I watch some stuff off the PVR, and then go on with my life – as the PVR blinks “Recording.”

Oh no – now it’s filling up again!