Since I tend to be (or, at least, I aspire to be) an early adopter, the absence of a DVR in my home might be rather surprising. The main reason I don’t have one is that I’m not particularly interested in signing a long term contract with my satellite provider, especially after one of the company’s employees, attempting to placate me when I was angry that they’d cancelled a service call 8 hours before the technician was supposed to be there, offered me a “special deal” on a DVR that discounted the price by the special price of $0.00.

I heard a comment on my local talk radio station (WVTS 950) that problems have recently been reported where DVR users are having a few minutes cut off of their television shows. Poor design on the part of the DVR companies? No. Apparently, network executives are “shifting” the start time of shows slightly to discourage DVR users, since DVR usage allows for the avoidance of commercials.

The success of TiVo and similar products seems to prove that these types of things are what the consumers want. Rather than trying to undermine consumer desires, it seems to me that corporations would be better served to find ways to serve both their advertisers and their customers.

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DVR technology is notable for letting one “pause live television.” It’d be nice to pause life so that I’d have time to write about everything I want to talk about. I’m working on a post addressing the reasons why our government shouldn’t be expected to participate in charitable giving. I’m attempting to fully consider the issue, particularly issues that are raised in the anonymous comment here.

Unfortunately, I’m not feeling real well today, so it may be a while before I can complete the post. The only reason I’m mentioning it is because having announced the post publically, I’ll now feel obligated to finish it.