I am developing a bad habit. Thankfully, it's rather G-rated. Few people really know what I'm doing when I start to reach for the radio knob when I want to hear something again. I sometimes visit my parents and I catch myself twitching to put the show on pause or instant replay the news.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell says "TiVo is God's machine," and he's right. This little black box (and all its brethren on the assembly line) must have been graced by the Almighty on the assembly line.

If you haven't heard by now, TiVo is a Digital Video Recorder a.k.a. a Personal Video Recorder. It delights geeks and TV junkies, while it frightens advertising agencies and the MPAA. It can pause live TV, record it show-by-show, and let you rate shows as you go. It can even remember that you like a particular show and record every showing automatically.

The biggest disadvantage (actually, the only one I can think of.) is that to use a TiVo to its full potential, the program guide is not free. It has to be downloaded by phone on an almost daily basis from the TiVo service. It has been worth it at $12.95 per month, but I kind of wish I had paid $199 for the lifetime of the device before it went up to $249. Some of the other DVR's on the market do not charge, but they do not have the same level of community support as TiVo. (www.tivocommunity.com)

I have the last feature disabled. I don't really want it using my unused space with more shows that I shouldn't waste more time on. There's also the added fear that my TiVo might decide that I'm gay, according to the shows I watched or recorded, and start recording shows accordingly. This happened to a guy that couldn't understand why his TiVo had labeled him incorrectly, but solved the problem by recording a lot of war programs. Subsequently, judging by the programs recorded, it thought he was a Neo-Nazi. Balance was finally restored.

Pausing live TV is the greatest part. If the phone rings, I'm not in a rush to get off the line. I could talk for twenty minutes and then be able to skip the commercials from an hour of programming. The unit uses a constant 'cache' of disk space for all programming as long as you're on a channel, so you can zip around from place to place in a show within a 30-minute window. If you change the channel, it starts over. Another nice thing about it constantly recording is if you turn on the TV and (insert favorite show name here) started 30 minutes ago, you get to see the whole thing by rewinding.

I mentioned the geeks earlier. I am most certainly in that group. I went ahead and modified my TiVo after the warranty expired and am happy as a clam. First, The modem fried when lightning struck, so I was stuck without programming information until I took the plunge and cracked the seal on the case for the first time. I put in an ethernet card so it can download programming info. from my home network. Fortunately, the current version of the software the TiVo runs on has the drivers for the ethernet card built-in. Next, I decided that I needed more space to record shows on. I had to open it up again and put in a second hard drive. No problem. There's a utility online that "blesses" the drive and allows it to be seen and used with no problems. Finally, I took the really big step and monkeyed with the hard drive that runs the whole show. The results were the ability to point my web browser at the IP address of the TiVo on my network and perform tasks on it from my computer. If you can set up a VPN or other methods, you can schedule shows to be recorded from the office. I have even read stories about hardcore geeks using their cell phones and palm pilots to record themselves on TV when they caught a fly ball at a baseball game.

The future holds wonderful things for the TiVo-faithful. Since I was converted, the Series 2 TiVo has been released with a few extra features. Some of them available now, some to be released in the future. The ability to play MP3's and pictures from your computer when it's on a network, and an officially supported remote-scheduling feature are just a couple worth mentioning. Yes, all DVR's are going to have some differences. True, TiVo might not make it if they end up as the only one charging for program information. My hope is, that they will be the "Kleenex" or "Xerox" of all set top recorders.

Email him at mark1@keypad.org