Pizza from your Tivo!

When I was a kid, there was one way to watch tv - in the family room, when the show aired.

And now? You can watch entire seasons on DVD. You can watch on-demand. You can watch shows online.

But, my favourite way to watch tv is on my Tivo. You pick which shows to record. You can pick one show at a time, all episodes of a show, new episodes of a show, shows with particular actors, etc. And then you watch it later. You can fast forward through commercials, pause if you get a phone call, rewind if you missed some dialogue, or even watch scenes over and over in slow motion.

The upshot is that many Tivo users are fast-forwarding through the commercials (or, like I did, setting it up so you can skip ahead 30 seconds at a time). But, advertising is a powerful force, and so they introduced new methods of advertising on the Tivo, specifically "tags" in commercials. If a commercial interests you, you can click a button and be taken to a more in-depth commercial or request info via the mail.

I did it (once) just to try it. I clicked on a 30-second GM spot, I think, and was taken to a longer GM commercial. Not earth-shattering. In fact, not even that useful, because I am rarely interested in 30-second commercials, much less interested enough to want to see a longer commercial.

But, it did get me thinking about Tivo's interactive capabilities. Without even extending the concept much, they could integrate links into tv shows themselves. Say there's a show with an interview of an author about his new book - a link could connect to reviews or a place to buy the book. Or a news program could offer links to a more in-depth story or an online article about the subject. Or for a social networking application, you could link to a community area to discuss an episode or program or actor.

There are so many possibilities! And I've been waiting patiently since 2005 (when I clicked the GM commercial) for *something*. *Anything*.

And it's finally happened. You can now order pizza from your Tivo. Groundbreaking? No. Useful? Not for me. But conceptually interesting and hopefully a harbinger of things to come :)