Gizmo dept.; cutting off Oscar.(Academy Awards television broadcast)(The Talk of the Town)

The test of any technology is the extreme case. For a car, it is surviving the Paris-Dakar Rally. For a hair dryer, it is baking Don King's hair into a ziggurat. And for TiVo, the digital video-recording device, it is capturing the wily and elusive Academy Awards broadcast.

In the past year, TiVo has been widely adopted in Hollywood, where it is beloved for its ability to store up to sixty hours of programming; to create a profile of its subscribers based on what they watch and then record shows it believes they will like; and to blitz through commercials at sixty times normal speed. In mid-March, TiVo sent its customers an e-mail urging them to build their Oscar nights around TiVo, but reminding them to "pad" their recordings by at least thirty minutes: "That way, in case the ceremony runs long (ahem!), you're covered."

David Park, an agent at United Talent Agency, went one step further. He said, "I set TiVo to record the Oscars" -- slated to run from 5:30 to 8:30 P.M., Pacific Time -- "and the hour-long Barbara Walters special that followed it. I knew I had four hours -- plenty of time. My girlfriend and I came home after a lovely dinner and chilled on the couch, eating tiramisu and fast-forwarding through the boring parts, the technical awards. We saw Halle Berry freaking out, saw Julia Roberts freaking out, and then, right before she announced Best Actor -- it cut off! I said, 'This totally sucks!' " The Awards had run four hours and twenty-three minutes, a record.

"My wife and I always watch the Oscars with another couple," John Collier, a writer for "King of the Hill," said. "This year, with TiVo, we smugly announced, 'We'll do things right.' So we sat our friends down to a butterflied leg of lamb and a nice bottle of Amarone, and then, at our leisure, we took our apple-strawberry crumble into the den and showed off TiVo's capabilities. We replayed the hilarious Reese Witherspoon moment, when her husband let her open the envelope, saying, 'You make more than I do, so go ahead,' and we checked out Gwyneth Paltrow's dress more than once. One of our friends said, 'I feel funny about this -- it doesn't feel like I've earned the evening.' And I said ...