I’ve been a TiVo user for a year or so, and I’m realizing that it’s really changed my expectations of other media.

My car radio: I’ve recently become a stereotypical NPR-listening liberal (before, I was just a stereotypical liberal), and it annoys me that getting out of the car to pump gas or run my errand means that I’m going to miss the interesting bit of the interview. What do you mean you can’t pause the radio? (Now I know that TiVo-like devices for radio exist – I just don’t happen to have one.)

Movies in theaters: I’ve literally felt my thumb twitch as I reach for a non-existent remote control, because I missed a line of dialogue, or because I want to see a scene again. What do you mean, no rewind?

I think that when I first used a DVR, the ability to pause/rewind TV had a gee-whiz feeling; now, pause/rewind just feels like a natural part of interacting with a media stream, and its absence feels like a bug.