Last week, I had one of those cable resets so my cable box was off when my TiVo wanted to record 24. In years past this was a crisis situation since there are no repeats. In the last few years, options have cropped up on the net to download those pesky missed TV Shows. I checked and both iTunes and Amazon offered downloads of 24 with a big difference. Itunes offered the March 12 episode for download just a few days later. My initial reaction was to get it, but then I remembered that TiVo had just launched a new service with Amazon’s Unbox service. I was never a fan of the service, although I had never used it since it involved some voodoo program to download etc. But now, I was able to download from Amazon directly into my TiVo, and if I signed up before April, I got $15 in credit.
I decided to take the risk and try the new Amazon service. It actually worked well except that I had to wait until the airdate of the next episode (3-19-07) to download the one I wanted. I guess FOX has some weird license agreement. I started the download at work and by the time I got home, the episode was there waiting for me. After watching it, I determined that the video quality was just as good as from the cable company. Best of all – there were no commercials!
I want to try downloading a movie to the TiVo just to see what it is like (probably a rental since I don’t have the ability to burn a TiVo program to a DVD.
I do wish TiVo and Itunes were integrated, but Apple just shipped their Apple TV device this week. I still prefer my TiVo since I can still get programs for free and then download the ones I miss, but I will certainly be checking out the Apple stuff when I get a chance.