At this point I’m going to assume that everyone knows what a DVR is, but if you don’t then just quickly it’s a device that records your TV to a hard disk so that you can either watch it later or to give you the flexibility to pause or rewind live broadcasts.

What sets Tivo apart from cable company DVRs is ease of use and extra features. Tivo is so easy to use that even my mother can do so (hooking it up to her television is a different question, but I digress). The people at tivo have really taken the time to understand how people want their digital content presented to them and the organization of the entire menu system just makes sense. Nice little touches like organizing a show in its own folder that you can either navigate into to pick particular episode or play all in chronological order (can you say “90210 marathon”?).

Now, that might not sound much different than your standard DVR, but prepare for me to blow your pants off. If you hook your tivo up to your broadband service you open up a whole world of online content. Subscribe to video podcasts, watch youtube video, rent videos from Blockbuster or Amazon, or watch movies from your netflix instant queue. All this is presented in an easy to access manner too.

Tivo does have a bit of a price to it. You’re gonna pay around $300 for one of their new “Premier” series boxes, though you can get older machines for discount the stuff I’ve seen with the new interface is really impressive. You also pay $12.95/month for the service, and if you have cable through someone like Mediacom you’ll need to get a cablecard so that your tivo can decode your digital signal. On the plus side the rental fee for the cable card is actually cheaper than the rental fee for a set-top box; last I checked it was $10/month for a box rental vs. $5/month for the cable card.

Really the thing that makes tivo stand out for me is just how it really changes the way you watch visual media. I don’t even know what time or channel shows are on anymore. I watch my programs whenever I want to and if I need to pause it to go do something then I just pause it and save the program for later. Now if I could get Tivo and Hulu to work together I’d die from sensory overload.

Do you have a tivo or another dvr? What is it about tivo that turns its users into evangelists? Am I just crazy?