Is it a toy, or is it actually worth the money? Internal note: check to see if Tivo is publicly traded; track past year’s performance; consider buying a few shares. Yeah, it’s worth the money. To a point. And because I’m getting cheaper as I get older. No, not cheaper; frugal. Except for when it comes to cars, car parts, computers, electronics…you get the idea.

Which is wear I had problems with Tivo originally. My friend Shannon kept telling me I just had to get one. My friend Erik had one, loved it but never really spoke the gospel of the Tivo much. I figured it’d be cool to have; better than having Heather record stuff on the same VHS tape over and over that she’s been using since about 1986. I don’t normally watch TV so I figured I’d buy one to play with it and ultimately hand it off to Heather to be her toy. Little did I realize, that the reason I don’t watch much TV is because Heather’s constantly hogging it with her crappy-ass-crappy reality shows. I didn’t understand the greatness I was missing. (mainly Southpark)

And it got rid of the nasty old VCR.

And now I get to piss Heather off by always wanting to watch something off the Tivo.

Okay, background on what Tivo does in case you only have a glimmer of an idea. Yeah, it records shows digitally onto an internal hard drive. And, yeah, it’s only got one tuner so it can only record one show at a time. You can however watch a pre-recorded show while it’s recording. But, you can’t watch a live show while it’s recording something else; only one tuner, remember? You get around that by just splitting the cable and watching the live show on the TV…but then you don’t get to pause it because the Tivo’s not recording it while you’re watching it.

Oh yeah, you heard right. Whatever you’re watching at the time gets recorded while you’re watching it so you can pause it. If it’s that engrossing that you just can’t miss a moment. Okay, not the most useful feature.

Then we come to the Home Media Option. Again, not the most full featured package. But it does let you stream mp3′s to your home audio system, view pictures and setup programs for your Tivo to record via the web. Not worth the full $99 but I got a rebate offer making it $59. For $59 where can you buy anything to let you stream mp3′s wirelessly to your home audio system?

And, like I said, I finally get to watch Southpark again.

Tivo 40hr DVR: $199 with $50 rebate = $149

Montly Tivo service: $12.95/month

Home Media Option: $99 with $40 rebate = $59

Total: $220.95

A lot less than the first VCR’s were, that’s for sure. The $300 lifetime option seemed a little excessive, especially since I’m sure the tech will change and I’ll probably have an HDTV by then.