The cliche that children are better than their parents at programming a video recorder was never more than half true. The user interface of most recorders is risible and only youngsters can be bothered with it, just as it was they who started the texting boom using the equally unsuitable numerical keypad. Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) are at last making TV recording as easy as it should be, a matter of simply clicking a listing. But, coupled to computers or PVRs, they mean we can view TV more like we read a book - in chunks and to our own schedule and we can do it on a laptop, a PC or a portable media player. There are even pilot TV broadcasts to handheld PDAs. It's the death of the couch potato, passively taking in anything the TV throws out.
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