…possibly, nothing. It’s all in the hands of Time Warner Cable, which somewhere in a four-hour window today is supposed to install two Cablecards in my new HD TiVo. (Don’t know what Cablecards are? Good for you! I’d explain, but that would be too dorky even for Lev’s blog.)
I know, I know. When the TiVo Series 3 came out, I whined that at $799 a pop, it was too pricey to be worth it even to me. So I waited. And coveted. And hit “refresh” at Amazon about every ten minutes to see if the prices had come down yet. And read about the features, again and again. THX sound! Record two HD shows at once! Connect it to your home computer network! Get rid of your lousy cable-company set-top box! Be able to brag twice as boringly to strangers about a piece of TV equipment that people with real lives have managed to live without! Relieve yourself of hundreds of dollars you might otherwise be forced to give to a deserving charity!
When over the holidays I saw a real live HD TiVo in action at my brother-in-law’s house, I knew I would have to cave. So after the New Year, when retail prices on the Series 3 dropped about a hundred bucks and change, I decided that this was the perfect price point. Of course, had TiVo rolled out the box at $999 and dropped it to $799, then by God, $799 would be a bargain. I’m as self-deceiving as any good American consumer; I just want the illusion of saving money.
Oh, and before you bother asking in the Comments section: yes, everyone who owns a TiVo blathers about it exactly this much.