New Tivo Technology-- So Cool!

OK, I'm going to warn you-- ocassionally I have a total geeky tech moment, and I feel compelled to share it here, so I've made a new category.  Maybe you don't know, but I work on websites and am interested in advances in technology.  I'm not sure whether this officially counts as "funny" or "strange," but it IS interesting, and I thought it was worth mentioning.  So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The other night we were watching a Tivo'd episode of House when I noticed something so cool, I'm surprised no one thought of it before.  By cool, I mean "moderately annoying to the tv watcher," but cool that the tech people finally figured it out, since advertisers have been kvetching about lost revenue from people not watching commercials for so long.  Maybe you've noticed this too-- the people at Tivo have figured out how to embed some nifty pop-up style technology into their interface, so that when you try to zap through the commercials, the message appears OVER the commercial you're fast-forwarding.  I think this is the rough equivalent of the push technology employed by web designers who force a pop-up when they don't want you to leave their website just yet.  I have to say-- I'm SHOCKED that no one came up with this before.   I mean, we've all had Tivo for what, five years now, and marketing/ tech people are just now finding ways to force you to see their message anyway?  Wow.

Has anyone else noticed this?  Has this been around for awhile, and I'm just now paying attention?  Granted, we don't watch that much tv (even on Tivo), so they could've rolled this out without my knowing.  The commercial in question was a 24 Hour fitness commercial, that then pushed an offer you could find out more about by using the green "thumbs up" button on your Tivo.  That's nuts!

So, congratulations to whatever clever programmer at Tivo who finally got this to work.  Now, I'd really like to debate the user-friendliness of a feature called "Swivel Search," but that's a whole different post.

Comments

[Robert]

I've never had Tivo, but I prefer watching shows from my DVD recorder rather than when it's being shown, because of the commercials. Five minutes' worth during most shows. While I recognize the danger of missing some really cool commercials, I save almost 20 minutes of my life by watching recorded shows. And there are those world's funniest commercial specials that come on from time to time.

[Mark23]

That thing looks pretty cool. Its cool and all the information is very useful