I made a purchase today that seems to show a dividing line among my friends: The hardcore techno-geeks from…well, the sane.
I bought a little wireless netowrk reciever for my TiVo that allows me to schedule recordings via the internet while I’m out of town, and view photos and play mp3’s off my computer.
The first purpose was the main impetus for the purchase, since I’m going out of town for a couple weeks on Sunday, and I wanted to see if I could get it to work before I left.
I explained this purchase to a number of people and the reactions seem to be falling into two camps:
1. “Oh my god. That’s so. fucking. cool.”
2. “Why on earth do you even need that?”
I’m wholly in agreement with the former camp, but I also see the point of the latter. It’s kind of odd when technology keeps spurring you to buy more and more technology until you’re broke.
That, plus there are now so many radio waves going through my apartment (cell phone, 802.11 network, cordless phones, etc) that I can probably cook a TV dinner without ever putting it in the microwave.
I’d probably even get a 2nd TiVo if I could ever actually justify to myself watching that much goddamn television. The fact that I can only(!) record 50 hours of television at medium quality is the only thing that’s preventing me from becoming a total blob.
But for now, my techno-lust has been sated. At least until the next-generation iPod comes out sometime in the fall.
It’s a good thing you neglected to inform me of this purchase last night. I’ll refrain from comment here, but let’s just leave it at this:
I don’t fall into the first camp.
My TV’s shitty enough that I can’t tell the difference between basic quality and best quality, so I get more storage that way.
As for the remote scheduling, if you connect your cable modem to the TiVo, you can do that. I don’t think you need a separate component. I could be wrong…
You have to get a USB adapter to connect a cable modem to the TiVo, since the TiVo doesn’t have an ethernet port. Since I’ve already got a wireless network, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to get a wired one and run yet more cable through my house when I can just get a wireless one for about ten bucks more and not have to run a giant ethernet cable out to my living room.
Plus, wireless gives 50% more geekly joy, on average.