History is shaped by our hands.

This is an excerpt from an article on c|net.

A majority of national advertisers plan to cut spending on TV commercials by 20 percent in the next five years, when they believe ad-skipping devices like TiVo will take hold in households, according to a new survey. The premise of the report is that digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo, which let TV viewers record programming and fast-forward through commercials easily, will be in 30 million homes within the next five years, up from an estimated 3 million today.

WTF? We've had this technology for over 20 years! Are journalists so desperate to get a story that they will just overlook things, or did they honestly forget about those devices called VCRs that have been around since the early 1980s?

TiVo does 3 things better than VCRs. It eliminates the need to have a pile of tapes, it boosts quality, and it automatically programs the recording jobs for you. The basic premise is the same as it was 20 years ago! Tape something that you might not be home to watch - skip the commercials when you watch the show later.

We've been skipping commercials since the first guy paid $1200 for a Sony Betamax and taped an episode of Dallas. Am I really supposed to believe that no one skipped commercials until just a few years ago when TiVo came out? Come on!