However, I’m inherently skeptical of any technological “solutions” to parenting, that outsource the job in this way. There’s no replacement for active parenting.

It’s far less important what a kid watches than having their parent there to provide context for it. Either watch TV with them or don’t let them watch it at all, Tivo isn’t a parent or even a babysitter.

(As a side note, I’d want nothing to do with anything the “Parents Television Council” is involved in.)

Everyone seems to be taking for granted that TV or TiVo should be any part of your children’s life at all. My children do not watch TV. And I do not watch children’s TV (or any TV). So I can’t really say that all TV is mind-rotting drivel.

I can say that I prefer to have my child emotionally engaged in his own world, not some fantasy in a box. When I need some space to make dinner, or just some time to myself, I sit my children down in front of home movies on the computer. My child enjoys remembering the things in the movies, and discussing them. Grandparents, aunts, cousins, etc, who we don’t see very often can still be a part of our daily lives. Instead of the children bonding with Steve or Blue (well, there I’m showing my ignorance — Steve’s been replaced, hasn’t he?)

My children are pretty young, so maybe this will stop being interesting for them when they get older. But I think this is a good strategy for younger children, which does not involve the advertising industry, cross-marketing and the like.

Teach your children to think critically about what they see on TV, and teach them to eat properly by feeding them tasty and nutritious food at home, and they will grow up psychologically and physically healthy in a way that no amount of TV control can accomplish.

As for DirecTV, it’s pretty clear (except perhaps to DirecTV) that they’ve blown a great opportunity with TiVo to make their customers happy, instead opting to try to squeeze a few extra bucks out of hardware rental fees. When I moved from a standalone TiVo + digital cable to a DirecTV TiVo; the DirecTiVo was the best thing going. Totally responsive and reliable, no IR lag, no re-encoding, a fantastic viewing experience, I’ve been a DirecTiVo evangilist since then, and have convinced several people to sign up.

Now that a few years have passed, and DirecTV has focused on their own new DVRs, the DirecTiVo is still great, but is now lagging in features. Then I made the move to HDTV with the HD DirecTiVo, and it is still good, but lacking in the performance and the few UI feature updates that the non-HD TiVos got, so it’s annoying to use a lot of the time. And, when I complain to DirecTV, one rep told me, frankly, that rolling out MPEG-4 local HD channels and HD DVRs takes priority over the existing HD TiVo customers.

So, DirecTV could have released some small software updates to their existing TiVos, and perhaps worked with TiVo on new boxes that could have even been sold at a premium to the DirecTV DVRs. But, now that it’s clear that their main goal is to give their existing TiVo customers nothing while focusing only on making money off selling their own DVRs to new customers, my only choice is to stop recommending DirecTV, and start waiting for the TiVo HD cablecard box. Ah, DirecTV. Opportunity, lost. Customers, soon to be lost.