Hauppauge HD PVR and Windows Media Center: Is it the working-class TiVo?

HD PVR's target market: Me

If I have a lifestyle -- a subject which, in and of itself, is debatable -- then it's doubtful that anyone in marketing would want to see it replicated as some sort of model for others to follow. I am the furthest thing from a typical consumer one would ever expect to find, and it must be written on my face. The other day while grocery shopping, a local TV news anchor was stopping customers and asking them their feelings on the state of the economy, for a spot on the afternoon newscast. She passed right by me on the way out of the frozen food section, and I could read the expression in her eyes: "Heck no, not him."

The major problem for media marketing experts today, including for those who stop grocery shoppers to ask their feelings or spending habits for demographic research, is determining how modern-day people "consume media." The very question speaks volumes about the principal misunderstanding such experts have about the way we live. Here in my office, to my immediate left are about a thousand of my favorite books, arranged not very artfully but at least well cared-for, several of which I've inherited from family. Downstairs you'll find my movie collection, more than half of which bears the moniker, "VHS." All of this "content," passed down through the decades, much of it well-loved, has yet to be "consumed" by anyone. I expect most of it to continue to exist three decades from now.

And yet the entertainment and publishing industries today remain besieged with the critical problem of controlling the channels, passageways, and walled gardens through which media is consumed. The idea of me, or you, or anyone "owning" a movie has never sat well in the minds or upon the stomachs of Hollywood studio executives. Even when TV screens were black-and-white, and some of them were round, studio execs were so frightened of the thought of people watching movies from their living rooms instead of cinemas, that in the 1950s for a short time, they actually produced cheap rip-offs of their own films with lesser stars and smaller budgets, just for television. Then in the '80s, what finally gave studios some relief about you watching a recording of a movie whenever you felt like it, was the idea that perhaps they could make some money from you wanting to rent it first. Thus began the whole process of devising, and then controlling, not only the delivery channel through which a movie was delivered to you, but also the quality of the picture and sound, and the length of time you'll be able to continue seeing it.

Three years ago, when I was covering the whole Blu-ray-vs.-HD DVD fracas, and I confronted producers about the likelihood of either format's near-term obsolescence, I was surprised at how many considered that a benefit. It would just make me repurchase the same film in the successor's format. "After all," one studio representative asked me, "how many VHS movies do you still own?" I refrained from embarrassing him with the answer.

It is because of the increasingly adversarial relationship between media's producers and consumers over what we want to see, hear, and read, that devices such as the Hauppauge HD PVR exist. Modern television and my family's lifestyle have evolved in diverging directions. If there is anything worth not only watching but enjoying, it needs to be available during a moment when I can relax; and I can no longer certify the exact time of that moment even 24 hours in advance. Simply because I happened to be free Friday at midnight does not mean I'll be free next Friday at midnight.

If television is to have any value to me at all, it needs to be capable of providing programming of some substantive value, at a time I can control, and in a way that lets me pause and return to it later. This is where my friends typically shout "TiVo" at the top of their lungs; and yes, TiVo does provide some tempting features. But those features are geared towards people who have more free time to invest in television, and I'm not one of them. Besides, I'm seriously analyzing the cost/benefit ratio of subscribing monthly to one service whose benefits I only have time to appreciate in the intervening minutes between the many events in my life.

Television as a medium is changing, and so is the lifestyle of the American working person. For the first time in about 70 years, however, they're not changing in tandem. TV, as the publishers of TV Guide are now painfully aware, no longer provides the scheduling grid around which the rest of the events in people's lives are based. There are too many variables in people's lifestyles today, the existence of which has given rise to the need for TiVo, Windows Media Center, and Hauppauge HD PVR. The good efforts of the fine engineers at Hauppauge to make fair use work for people, are being counteracted by the efforts of content and channel providers who want to bring back under some semblance of control and regularity something which may no longer be controllable anymore. We don't all read literature at the same time, why should we watch the same shows simultaneously?

So one can only watch Hauppauge's efforts with hope, and applaud their achievements even when they're incomplete. HD PVR gives more control to people over the media they've already paid for, than they had before. But to do that, it has to align the wandering stars that are the content providers, the service providers, the CE device manufacturers, and Microsoft. That task may never be complete.

Scott M. Fulton, III is the editor and publisher of Net1News.