A new dawn

If you noticed something special in the air today -- a certain ebullience, a feeling of liberation, let's say -- it might have been coming from our house.

Today we entered the orbit of TiVo HD.

We've put the days of our cable company's combination decoder box/DVR behind us. Someday we will remember navigating its ugly, difficult menus; trying to record an entire series and ending up with all the repeats as well; deleting series recordings when trying to cull repeat episodes from our queue; lacking the capacity to perform the simplest search for a show's title; and all the other quirks of its subutilitarian design, and we will laugh.

When I called to schedule a service call so that CableCards could be installed in our TiVo HD, the representative told me that the price of the cards had just been slashed by more than 1/3 with the start of the new year. When the representative came today to do the installation, he told us that we only needed one CableCard instead of two because he had just learned, much to his surprise, that the ones our cable company offer are multistream. And by the way, the service call occurred during the first half-hour of the four-hour window the company had provided. Clearly, something extraordinary was afoot in the universe.

When I got home from work this afternoon, our decoder box was done. The green light of the TiVo HD glowed confidently. Its distinctive "boop-boop" and "pip-POP!" was once again heard in the land. The pleasant, intuitive, cheerful interface seemed to take a task like recording all the first-run episodes of Project Runway, or any movie directed by Raoul Walsh, or programs with the word "Vegas" in the title or description, and shoulder the burden of interpreting the details and executing the complexities, like a butler murmuring, "no, no -- allow me, sir." Babysitters and visiting relatives will no longer need to read a two page handout to navigate our universal remote, on which the TV set's power button has been relegated to the CABLE page; we will hand them the TiVo remote, tell them to press power, channel up/down, and volume up/down, and they will smile in understanding.

Little wireless antennae glow as they transfer programs from our Series 2 box in the bedroom to the new HD box in the living room. If need be -- and you'd be amazed how often the need be, in this house -- we can record three shows at once: two on the dual tuner HD machine, and one on the old one, then watch them on whichever TV we like, whenever we like.

In short: food tastes better, beverages are more refreshing, and every passerby seems to have a song on his lips and a spring in his step today. The crazy plan worked, and we're giddy as schoolgirls. I look forward to filling up page after page of the Now Playing menu with HD goodness, while Noel can't wait until the queue is whittled down to a concise and manageable playlist. Right now two red lights decorate the TiVo's minimalist front panel; My Name Is Earl is recording on NBC, and last night's Daily Show/Colbert repeat is recording on Comedy Central. Everyone's a winner.

In search of the perfect television viewing system

We've been steadily upgrading our television and related accessories for the last few years, but we've never gotten ideal results. Even after upgrading the cabling throughout the house and getting rid of the crazy multiple splitters the previous owner had installed in the attic, we still get signal dropouts on our main set. The cable company has thrown up its hands and said that if we insist on splitting the signal (one goes to the digital HD cable box/DVR, the other to our TiVo which is incompatible with HD), we'll never get rid of the pixelation and freezing up that we experience periodically on the digital channels.

So we're looking at several options. Here's what I'd like to do, ideally, and why:

1. Keep the TiVo. I've discovered that I like dealing with interfaces that are well-designed and a joy to use. I'll pay a premium for an item that is pleasant to work with and reveals a user-centered design mentality. So I don't want to ditch my beloved TiVo for the utterly craptastic interface of our cable system's HD DVR, which frequently causes uncontrolled swearing on the part of the operator. And I don't want to be forced into a satellite system's DVR. I want my friendly, happy TiVo, and I'm willing to put up with extra expense or even a less-than-optimal package of channels in order to be able to use it.

TiVo just announced an affordable HD dual-tuner box, and we're strongly considering upgrading from our Series 2. Two downsides: (1) We'll have to pay monthly for the TiVo service, which we avoided last time by getting a "lifetime" subscription for a single fee. That option isn't available for the new box. (2) The new box isn't compatible with the satellite services we've considered switching to.

2. Keep the cable modem. I'm concerned that if we pull the plug on our cable TV service, we won't be able to keep getting cable internet. And I like our cable internet very much. I don't see any reason to bother with the hassle of getting a new ISP. Maybe I'm wrong, but my hunch is that a satellite system would use our existing cabling to deliver its signal to our outlets, and doesn't that mean that the cable system would no longer be sending the internet through that particular tube?

3. Get local broadcast network affiliates. Most of the HD we watch is on the broadcast networks. So I don't want to get any satellite package that doesn't include those channels.

I have some hope that the solution lies in the TiVo HD's support for the CableCard. If we can ditch our cable box/HD DVR combo and get the cable directly into the TiVo (with the digital tuning accomplished by the CableCard), then we keep our cable service and don't have to split the signal to use the TiVo. No more frustrating non-TiVo interface to deal with. Full-strength signal coming directly into the tuner.

The only question is whether our cable company, a charming local corporation that also provides water, electricity, garbage pickup, and recycling, is up-to-date enough (and compliant with the law enough) to support the CableCard. If not, then my greatest fear is that the welcoming pip-pop of the TiVo will no longer be heard in our living room, and that a lot more obscenities will.