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Sex & The City - TIVO Episode (spoilers)
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Posted by: dcborn61

So what did the maid do to Miranda's TIVO - sit on it? Looks like they were intimating a hard drive problem, but then Steve went and fixed it.

Posted by: WinBear

The maid indicated she sat on it. The way Steve fixed it made me think she had somehow hit "Clear" and "Select" a bunch of times on the Now Playing screen. There's an obscure possibility that she did some system reset that deleted all programs, but I think that would have wiped out season passes also. I loved the daily call failures while she was on the phone though.

Posted by: WinBear

Oh, when the "No Programs" screen came up, my partner said, "I don't think we've seen that since we started using TiVo."

Posted by: Cletus

I was actually wondering if that screen says "No Programs" for real. I don't remember, honestly, it's been 3 years since I saw it the last time. :)

Posted by: grecorj

TiVo screenshots: good.
TiVo storyline: forced.

And who knew TiVo made housecalls?

Posted by: dmaneyapanda

there was a scene which showed a bunch of "failed call" records (which to my knowledge doesn't exist and must have been mocked up), so it would appear to have been much more than a remote problem or an accidental show deleting problem.

Posted by: grecorj

quote:
Originally posted by dmaneyapanda
there was a scene which showed a bunch of "failed call" records (which to my knowledge doesn't exist and must have been mocked up), so it would appear to have been much more than a remote problem or an accidental show deleting problem.

TiVoPony said they helped with the screen mock-ups. That was the only one that seemed out of character.

Was that a real BBCA show that Miranda was obsessed with?

Posted by: Vox Acerbus

the storyline was forced. it's a shame, i was looking forward to it.

Posted by: scottjf8

Forced, yes, but I think it might have helped explain what TiVo is
to a lot of people who didn't understand it, but watch S&TC.

Posted by: HolyRoses

I watched this episode last night, On my TiVo, funny enough. Seemed like a paid commercial the way they portrayed it in the show for sure.

So how does this work? Does TiVo pay HBO to run footage of their product? Or does the S&TC crew love TiVo sooo much that they wanted to share their passion with the world?

-HR

Posted by: GT3NE1

I thought it was kind of wierd they featured the TiVo product (wether they got paid for it or not) and made the tech support people look like a bunch of idiots. :)

Also, there was one error in the script. At the beginning she said my boyfriend is taping my favorite tv show. TiVo doesn't use tapes. ( I am so anal about this phrasing). I always correct people when they say tape and not record when talking about TiVo. :)

Posted by: Kablemodem

The episode should have featured Miranda trying to add a larger hard drive to he TiVo. Then they could have thrown in some sexual inneuendo and she could have gone to the Undeground for help (only to find that the forum was down :rolleyes: ), Steve figures it out for her, and then Steve sees all the wishlists with "Steve" in the title and realizes that Miranda is still into him.

Posted by: ydkj0022

One thing I noticed on the TiVo central screen is that where logos usually appear there was a text based channel description, i.e. PBS, BBCA, CNN, none of the channels they used were ones that have logos. Was this done for their mockup or do these channel abbreviations appear on any production TiVo versions?

Posted by: Marco

If I were Tivo Inc. I wouldn't have paid for that publicity, which was not really positive at all. Far too much suggestion that the box is fragile and susceptible to malfunction at the slightest misstep.

Posted by: Vox Acerbus

yeah it was bad publicity imo. made it sound like the tivo was problematic.

Posted by: Ruth

Even with the failure plot, I think it was still a great promotion for TiVo. The screenshots were great and took up a lot of airtime, and the show did a good job of explaining what the device does and illustrating how regular people can find it indispensible -- all of which are things that can be hard to explain. Even though of course I would have preferred a working TiVo to a broken one, to me the fact that Steve fixed it so easily gave the whole thing a kind of "isn't it funny how women are clueless with technology" flavor to it, rather than a "TiVos break easily" message. (Not a wholly unproblematic message, but that's a different thread.) And actually, what with the ficticious TiVo service guy making home visits, the show actually made the options for fixing a broken TiVo seem better than they are! In fact, I thought was that the show was such a good ad for TiVo that when I saw that the forum was down last night, my first thought was that SATC generated sufficient traffic here to overwhelm the site!

Posted by: dengel

quote:
Originally posted by Vox
yeah it was bad publicity imo. made it sound like the tivo was problematic.

Well... it's a fair warning on the HDVR2's :)

d.

Posted by: BlearyEyed

quote:
originally posted by HolyRoses
So how does this work? Does TiVo pay HBO to run footage of their product? Or does the S&TC crew love TiVo sooo much that they wanted to share their passion with the world?

I actually just got into this whole topic a couple weeks ago. HBO (at least publicly) does not accept money for product placement's. I read a statement from an HBO spokesman saying they could pay for all of their original programming via product placements if they wanted to, but that they refuse to do it. All that said they do ask for free stuff from time to time, I know Motorola and I want to say Chevy provide free products.

So all in all my bet would be that either there's somebody on the writing staff who loves TiVo, or just as likely it was just a good storyline and it was a right place right time situation.

Posted by: jamesbobo

What would you think Miranda's reaction would be if her TiVo recorded Sex and the City and she saw herself and her friends on TV?
This is the problem I have with TV characters watching TV, although George Burns put it to good use in his show (showing my age).

If someone watching this show knew nothing about TiVo before, this should make them curious. That's good for TiVo.

Posted by: DLiquid

I just couldn't believe how in-depth the TiVo storyline got, complete with screenshots and sound effects. I almost thought I was watching an informercial until the thing broke. Great publicity for TiVo. That the nanny screwed it up and then the baby daddy fixed it isn't a bad thing, it just gave TiVo more screen time.

Posted by: RGM1138

Note that Miranda obviously already has one of the new HD TiVo units, since it's playing back through a 16:9 (widescreen) Philips monitor. :)

It also cracked me up that she kept uttering "Shut up, shut up" while FF through the commercials.

Bob

Posted by: IJustLikeTivo

quote:
Originally posted by RGM1138
Note that Miranda obviously already has one of the new HD TiVo units, since it's playing back through a 16:9 (widescreen) Philips monitor. :)

Probably not. All the widescreen TVs have some sort of stretch mode. Mine is old and it has two different widescreen modes for 4:3 images.

IJLT

Posted by: bobsbizzy

quote:
Originally posted by GT3NE1
Also, there was one error in the script. At the beginning she said my boyfriend is taping my favorite tv show. TiVo doesn't use tapes. ( I am so anal about this phrasing). I always correct people when they say tape and not record when talking about TiVo. :)

Yep, that's pretty anal. :D

Posted by: bobsbizzy

quote:
Originally posted by RGM1138
It also cracked me up that she kept uttering "Shut up, shut up" while FF through the commercials.Bob

Probably suits HBO too! :D

Posted by: KRS

It is too bad that TiVO got portrayed in a slightly negative light. Would have been better if they had had the maid accidnetally delete something, or as my wife suggested (!), if the end of her show had been cut off.

Howard Stern has complained on the air a few times about his TiVO doing that and missing the last crucial minutes of some reality show.

Posted by: JTAnderson

quote:
Originally posted by KRS
It is too bad that TiVO got portrayed in a slightly negative light. Would have been better if they had had the maid accidnetally delete something, or as my wife suggested (!), if the end of her show had been cut off.

I tend to think a fantasy problem (sitting on the peanut broke TiVo) is better publicity than bringing up a real problem (missing the ends of shows).

By the way. Do you really think the maid sat on the peanut by accident?

Posted by: Kablemodem

quote:
Originally posted by JTAnderson
By the way. Do you really think the maid sat on the peanut by accident?

Are you one of those conspiracy nuts? Are you also going to claim that more than one sitter was involved?