Unpacking the television

Abstract

This article investigates the changing television watching practices amongst early adopters of personal hard-disk video recorders (such as Tivo) and Internet downloading of video. Through in-depth interviews with 21 video enthusiasts, we describe how the rhythms of television watching change when decoupled from broadcast TV schedules. Devices such as Tivo do not simply replace videotapes; TV watching becomes more active as programs are gathered from the schedules, played from a stored collection and fast forwarded and paused during playback. Downloads users exploit the Internet to view shows and movies not broadcast, yet this watching is not fundamentally different from recording shows using a PVR, since both involve selection of shows from a limited range and a wait before the shows can be watched.