The PVR

On Friday I finally broke down and went to get a Bell Expressvu model 5900 PVR satellite receiver. What's a PVR, you ask? It stands for "Personal Video Recorder." Like most acronyms, that probably doesn't tell you much more than you already knew. It's what a TiVo is, integrated in with our satellite receiver. It has a hard drive in it, so we can save TV shows in their direct digital format as they come down the pipe from the satellite. Then we can play them back later at our leisure. It also buffers whatever TV show you're currently watching, so you can pause live TV, back up to see something you missed, then fast forward through the commercial to catch back up to the live broadcast, etc.

To say this thing makes the VCR obsolete is an understatement. You can't even compare it to the difference between CDs and cassette tapes. That comparison applies to DVDs. The biggest drawback of DVD is that the recorders are very expensive, so most people only have DVD players. The PVR is to the VCR what television is to stone tablets. You don't realize just how convenient it really is until you use one for a while. It completely changes the way you watch television. Setting up a program on the VCR has always been a pain, no matter how easy they try to make the process. Part of that pain comes from the reality of dealing with tapes, and managing the stacks of tapes that hold shows you've recorded to watch later. Or at least we have stacks of them. You always had to plan out in advance what you wanted to record, and when, and whether you had enough blank tapes, and what else would be on that tape, and so forth. Now you just find something interesting in the guide listing, and pick it. Later, it magically shows up in a list of saved shows. Cool.

So if it's so cool, what took us so long to get around to getting one? It's just that I'm opposed to Bell's monopolistic price fixing policy. They've decided that the price for this thing is going to be $300, and nobody is allowed to sell it for less than that. They're the only game in town. They control the programming, so if you don't play by their rules, you don't get to watch TV. No third party hardware. You can't even use Dish Network hardware with their service, even though the hardware is actually identical other than the software load and the little logo sticker on the front. Nope, if you don't buy your receiver from Bell, they won't allow you to use it. It's like if Ford bought all the roads, and wouldn't allow you to drive your car on the road unless it was made by Ford and you paid full retail price for it new from a Ford dealer.

The security protocols I had to go through in order to get this thing were nothing short of ridiculous. I bought it from Future Shop. I had to show photo identification in order to prove that I was actually who I said I was. They looked up my account information on a secure Bell web site to make sure I had been paying my bills. Am I the only one who isn't crazy about Future Shop having access to everyone's account details with Bell? I had to sign two copies of a two-page form with a huge agreement detailing what I can and can't do with the receiver. And apparently, had I not called Bell to activate the receiver, I would have had a huge non-activation fee piled on my account.

By way of comparison, it took me approximately 10 times longer to buy a satellite receiver than it usually does to cross the border between the United States and Canada.

From what I've read in the various user forums online, all of this is to combat the piracy problem. Apparently people have a tendency to buy these receivers, hack in to them so that they'll display television without paying the monthly subscription fees to Bell, and then re-sell them on the black market. THE HORROR! I've also read that these precautions against piracy are in place because of pressure being put on Bell by the government ("we're here to help...") I can only guess that the government is squeezing the satellite companies because of pressure being placed on them by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) or the Canadian equivalent. Hollywood, in other words.

It amuses / depresses / concerns me that we live in a world where you can download instructions on how to make a nuclear bomb off the Internet (because the words are protected as free speech) as long as you don't actually do anything illegal with that information and knowledge, but it's illegal to even tell someone how to copy a DVD or watch satellite programming without paying for it.

But, anyway, after being interested in getting a PVR ever since they first came out a couple of years ago, and then realizing that we absolutely must have one of these one day after using my parents TiVo last December... the wait is finally over and we have one. Just in time for the fall TV season. Now if only we had any actual time to watch any of the shows we're recording... :-)