Well, we got it all set up last night. And you’re right – surfing is a slow proposition, but it’s not so much the fault of the digital cable as how we have to interface the TiVo with the digital cable box: a wire runs out the back to the TiVo to two IR emitters placed in front of the IR receiver on the cable box; you tell TiVo what channel you want, it sends the signal to the cable box at about the speed of someone pushing in the channel numbers on the remote control. Changing channels takes 2-3 seconds, aproximately. I don’t see it as that big of a barrier for how we watch television, though – now we have two channel guides at our disposal, and that was usually how I surfed anyway.
My greater concern is that with all the nifty new channels, this is going to mean more time in front of the tube and less time doing more productive things. We’re definitely doing this on a experimental basis: if after a month it looks like it’s detrimental (to our free time, our social life, or our health), out it goes. We’ll see.