How does tivo work?

Question

Say I'm watching South Park and want to fast-forward through the commercials...And I do this on every show I watch. Would I eventually run out of TV to watch? Since I'm fast-forwarding?

I don't have TiVo, I just had a dream where the networks blew up because of people using TiVo too much.

Kind of stupid, I know.

Answer 1

Tivo records in real time, and because it uses a hard drive you can instantaneously pause and rewind that program.  

For example, if you are watching live broadcast, like South Park when it's playing on Comedy Central, you can pause it and rewind it.  From there you could fast forward but it would eventually catch up to the live broadcast, and you would have to watch it just like everyone else, commercials and all.

The only time you can fast forward through as much as you want is on the recorded part.  But it's all on the hard drive on your Tivo unit, so nothing will blow up... it would be great if you could fast forward live tv!  The networks would probaby blow up like you said. :-)