We used to demand instant gratification. Now, what's really important is delayed satisfaction.

Don't have time to see a movie in the theater? Wait a few weeks and it will be out on DVD. Don't have enough energy to drive to Blockbuster? Wait a little more and Netflix will deliver it to your mailbox.

Same thing for television. TiVo and DVR, I'm told, have revolutionized when and how we watch the tube. Didn't set your machine? Not to worry; the "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" episode you missed last night is available for podcast purchase this morning.

No longer are we slaves to network time schedules. We live life (or at least watch "The Office") on our own terms. If the Sunday New York Times, all your magazines and a dozen paperback novels can pile up week after week, so can the TV shows and videos that don't shout out to be seen NOW!

What a fantastic improvement, or so the reasoning goes. But as a founding father of the Me Generation, I'm not so sure.

I want to see my movies in a big dark theater, filled with humanity and the scent of slightly burned popcorn, not in the privacy of my own living room. I want to disappear communally into a fictional world for several hours and re-emerge only when someone turns the lights back on, not when a cat jumps into my lap or a motorcycle roars down my street.

I want my MTV (and ESPN, SciFi and Comedy channels) now, not later. I want to watch television when it's still fresh and meaningless, not bathed in the glory of next-day reviews and friends' recommendations. I want to see "Seinfeld" reruns as soon as I get home after a long day of crabby editors and distracted drivers, not when I'm feeling better after a couple of beers.

With all modern technology, television has become less about escape and more about reality, as in reality TV shows. What's missing in the TiVo era, though, is a shared community of people who all watch the latest show together (or at least at the same time) and then talk about it the next morning around the office coffee pot. Now, the morning conversation goes something like this:

"Hey, did you see 'Deadwood' last night?"

"No, I taped it. I'm going to watch it after Pilates class on Wednesday."

Or "I just watched the whole first season on DVD."

I know what you're going to say. I'm a grumpy old guy who probably doesn't even know how to set his VCR and wouldn't recognize an iPod if it was implanted in his head. I plead guilty.

Still, you have to admit there's something to be said for instant gratification. Otherwise, why would sex still be so important in the big scheme of entertaining things?

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.