Time-Shifting TV

I think for the last few weeks, I had been time-shifting all TV shows. In other words, I "taped" them onto my computer and watched them later. The obvious reason is so that I can get on with more important things such as doing my homework, but another perhaps equally important reason is I might have built up a zero tolerance on TV ads. It is a well known fact that a programme that lasts an hour on TV is only about 40 minutes on a DVD, ad-free. Therefore this is not so much a protest against TV ads than an attempt to save precious time for other more important things, such as doing my homework. (I know I am repeating myself) Actually, I had been skipping ads since the days of the VHS tapes. I would stop the player and fast forward (it's quicker this way) about 3 minutes, a delicate process since it was very easy to overshoot the mark. Nowadays, VLC player allows me to fast forward by one minute or 10 seconds with shortcut keys and does so with no delays. This creates even greater incentive for me skip ads and now I cannot tolerate breaks between programmes. To demonstrate how far I have gone, even if I am free to watch a show "live", I will still record and watch it later, preferring to spend that time on other tasks such as, need I repeat, doing my homework.

To digress a little, I want to point out this approach to consume TV (on a computer) is not really new to me. The day I landed in Melbourne for my uni degree I knew I would do all my video watching on a computer. This is why my house had no TV -- my sister and I both watched TV on our computers. (We now have one for mum though) In fact, incorporating television into my computer means I can do without a tape recorder and a DVD player. When DVD recorders with built-in hard drives came out I frowned at the idea. For the same price I could have 10 times the storage and much more flexibility in manipulating the content. There is no doubt that even in the future, "dumb" appliances such as stand-alone disc players will never make it into my home. Either the content go through the computer or I will not consume it.