There’s a two-story house off Green Street in Urbana where five college guys are loving life.
Although “it’s not the prettiest house on the block,” as one of the roommates, University of Illinois psychology major Eric Resor, put it, it’s what’s inside that matters.
In the home, there’s a refrigerator stocked with the things that are important to college kids living off campus.
Naturally, there are beds with mattresses, and, thanks to a recent development in television programming technology, a video-on-demand service provided by the roommates’ cable company, Insight Communications.
Similar to the better-known TiVo digital recording service, video on demand provides digital cable subscribers with anytime remote-control access to a variety of programming from a predetermined set of channels.
Resor, 20, and his friends receive HBO and Showtime on demand from their cable company. That means they can play (and pause and rewind) movies, original series and sports programming made available by those two broadcasters at any time, as many times as they want.
The difference between video on demand and TiVo?
You pick which programs to record with TiVo, which stores your selections on a hard drive device in your home. With video on demand, you get what each network chooses to make available through massive computer servers housed at your cable company’s facility.
“If I miss a movie or an episode of [HBO’s popular dramatic series] `The Sopranos,’ I can sit down and watch it,” Resor said. “But only if it’s available. I can’t prerecord.”
But it’s another HBO series that kept Resor and his friends preoccupied during the recently completed semester.
“We watch `Curb Your Enthusiasm’ so much it’s not even funny,” he said.
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“The theme song plays in my head while I sleep.”
That’s because the entire third season of the comedy series was available on demand.
And the roommates watched it–over and over again.
Even Resor’s girlfriend, Sarah, got caught up in the effects of video on demand.
“If she came over, we were watching TV,” he said.
Did she mind?
“She didn’t complain,” Resor answered quickly. “She likes watching `Curb’ too.”
Then he paused to consider his statement.
“At least I hope she does.”
Video on demand is not available in the Chicago area, but a representative of the region’s largest cable company, Comcast Corp., said that it will begin rolling out its version of the service, called On Demand, to its 1.6 million Chicago-area digital cable subscribers in the first quarter of 2004.
The rollout will be completed by the end of the year, and there will be no additional charge for the service.
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