Commentary Box Continued

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There's not much doubt that TiVo hasn't broken any rules or acted that unfairly. The recording was kept on a part of the hard disk that would otherwise be unused -- it's set aside for recording short promotions from a special channel when the box isn't otherwise busy, but those plans haven't come to pass yet. If the box was in use for some other purpose -- recording a show on another channel or being used to watch something -- then it would carry on doing whatever it was doing, or at the worst ask the viewer whether it was OK to change channel. There are reports that not all the boxes behaved themselves, which should worry TiVo, but on the whole it looks as if the company did the deed with as much thoughtfulness as it could.

Of course, there are plenty of viewers who feel otherwise. Giant threads erupted overnight on the Internet discussion areas dedicated to TiVo -- independent of the company but used by it to communicate with its customers. Some obviously liked the idea, saying that it proved TiVo was being taken seriously by the broadcasters, but many more were fizzing with indignation or erupting with anger. Whatever the Internet's done for interpersonal communication, it hasn't done much for people's tempers. Postings along the lines of "It's MY video recorder and I want to be the ONLY PERSON who tells it what to do!" are typical. TiVo hasn't said much -- you can almost hear the company stroke its beard in bemusement -- other than this was an experiment, it'll happen again and it's taking note of what people are saying.

The whole affair is an object lesson in managing expectations and understanding how people perceive technology. Not being able to delete the recording is just plain daft, but had the company made it plain before the event that the box can record things off its own bat, that it was going to do so at some point in the future, and that it wouldn't affect anything else, the indignation would be much muted. This is the sort of thing you think about before you sign up: nobody would be put off buying the thing. Not many people will end up watching things that they would otherwise not have watched: quite a few people complained that they had previously told the TiVo not to record the programme -- the box makes suggestions for you based on the sort of things you like to watch -- and found it infuriating that they were being ignored.

And that's the heart of it -- our toys may indeed do what the hell they like much of the time, but they should at least pretend to be under our control. TiVo's technology may be first-rate, but their psychology needs a bit of attention.

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