My uncle, who we are staying with, bought a TiVo-like device recently (allegedly so that we can record good stuff for the kids, though that sounds like a ruse to me). Naturally I’m very relieved to have such a device back in my life (though I bought an Elgato DTT stick recently, with a review to follow). This particular unit, from Sagem, has 2 tuners so you can record one program while recording another, and enough storage for about 80 hours of TV (recording the mpeg-2 stream natively, which gives literally broadcast-quality storage). Early days, but if you can’t have a TiVo this looks tolerable.
All good, you might think. Unfortunately it also flagged my increasing age, in a way you may not expect. Responding to my uncle’s initial enthusiasm at pausing live TV I mentioned that Claire is not much of a tech fan, but it takes an event as serious as a trans-Atlantic move to pry her TiVo from her resisting fingers. And then I realized that this is the story I always tell about TiVo. Which is fine, I guess, but I’m aware that telling the same set of stories over and over is something I recognize in people who are older than I consider myself to be.