The Tivo Spoiler, an Unintended Side Effect of Good Usability

Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 7:33 pm. 0 comments

Tivo has 3 speeds of fast-forward. One arrow is about 2x, and when you drop back to real time, it starts playing right at that spot. But with two arrow and three arrow levels of fast-forward, when you click play to drop back to normal playback speed, Tivo rewinds a bit, on the premise that by the time your brain processes the scene that you want to see, you’ll have skipped past it a bit, so Tivo guesses how far back to rewind and starts playing from there.

In theory, this is a great feature, because you can relax a bit more while fast-forwarding. Instead of being on the edge of your seat and trying to “predict” when what you want to see will show up, you get to see a slight “preview” of what you are fast-forwarding past, and then you say “aha! that’s what I want”, and then Tivo skips back a bit so you don’t miss anything. But that, alas, is the Tivo Spoiler.

For those of us who occasionally watch reality TV shows that have various dramatic moments, it’s awesome to fast-forward through all the gobbledygook and inane chatter the hosts spew out to waste time and ratchet up the tension. The only problem is that as you try to drop out of fast-forward to see the Big Reveal or whatnot, you usually tend to see just a frame or two of the contestants just before your Tivo rewinds a few seconds so you can watch the envelope opening or what not, but your brain has already processed who won and who lost, so it’s kind of a let down.

*sigh*

I’m not sure how to get around this, really, aside from being more vigilant during fast-forwarding and also subjecting myself to more inane reality-show chatter…