What Is Real?

The DirecTV blues

I recently moved and while I was having my services switched over I was told I could sign up for DirecTV and get Tivo service for $6 a month. My in-laws have Tivo and I LOVE it. It gives the user a rich user experience, the menus are nice and intuitive, and they never seem to have any problems. Since Tivo has priced themselves out of the market independently I knew they had ties to DirecTV.

It turns out DirecTV (basking in their own arrogance and stupidity) cut their ties with Tivo and thought they could make their own DVR. Later they find out their programmers are not smart enough and their designers not imaginative enough to make their own DVR. What did they do? They release the R15, DirecTV’s new and improved “Tivo”. Apparently DirecTV’s new approach to business is, if you can’t do it right sell a half-working, ill designed product.

I was a little upset that they pulled the bait and switch on me and when I called them to confront them they tried to tell me that “Tivo” is a verb meaning DVR and not a company or another product. No matter how I tried to convince them that “Tivo” was infact an actual product they would talk down to me as if I wasn’t “in the know” like them.

To top it all off I read a few days later Comcast (who I just canceled to get DirecTV) recently struck a deal with Tivo. Not only am I under contract with DirecTV for TWO years using a clearly inferior product, but I have to set idle while my old cable provider uses the tool that made me want to switch in the first place.

It is a cruel cruel world!