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Eric Smith watches hundreds of basketball games for his day job as a radio host specializing in the NBA. But, as a true fan, there are a few matches he particularly looks forward to.

Team Canada's recent Olympic basketball qualifier series, for one.

Because some of the games aired at odd hours, though, such as 6 a.m., he recorded them with his personal video recorder, or PVR, to watch

later.

Whenever he can't see a game live, he is forced to put his own spoiler protection plan into action, to preserve the suspense.

He makes sure to switch his radio alarm clock from his station, Toronto's Fan 590, to an all-music station on game mornings.

He avoids all newspapers and sports and news TV stations with tickers running along their base.

And he lets it be known among his colleagues and friends that he wants to stay in the dark.

"I don't want to spoil it," he says.

"I'm the type of person that can't watch something if I already know the result." (Team Canada did not qualify.)

Now that the PVR is hitting critical mass, especially among sports fans, many people are going to great lengths to invoke their own personal blackouts. During the Olympics the challenge will be intensified.

"It will be absolutely the most-recorded Olympics out there," says Shawn Omstead of Bell Canada's digital television service, Bell TV (called Bell ExpressVu until this week), which will be providing both network Olympics coverage and live raw feeds.

Mr. Omstead, general manager of Bell TV's video product management, says about 25 per cent of Canadian households are using PVR technology. The service now has a higher capacity than it used to, so viewers don't have to ration their recordings. And this Olympics is the first to be broadcast in full high definition, which he expects will also boost PVR interest.

Setting up your own cone of silence is easy enough when you're lagging a few hours behind an Ottawa Senators game or even a few episodes of The Wire. But in the midst of the TV event of the season, with a rolling barrage of events at odd hours because of a 12-hour time difference - and thus an ever-expanding queue of events to catch up on - avoiding media reports and water cooler talk will require, well, Olympic dedication.

Take the simple act of walking down the street. Mr. Smith says when he has recorded a game he can usually walk by newspaper boxes without fear, since sports sections are usually in the back of the papers. But the Olympics are likely to be splashed on the front pages.

Andrew Davies, another PVRer, says he has become adept at stopping a friend or colleague midsentence with a quick, "Don't talk about it." He recently avoided his colleagues' discussion of the series 24 because he was playing catch-up. Yet Mr. Davies says it will be impossible to avoid Olympics coverage since he works at Bay Bloor Radio in Toronto and the place will be filled with wall-to-wall Olympics. Soccer's Euro Cup was bad enough, he says.

"It's such a big thing, it's hard to escape Olympic fever," says Mr. Davies, a custom installation manager.

And, as was the case when other technologies such as the cellphone and the BlackBerry launched, there aren't any commonly held etiquette rules regarding the devices.

Still, there's hope, etiquette expert Louise Fox says.

All parties in a PVR blackout scenario would do well to remember to show a little consideration, Ms. Fox says. Try to imagine a situation in which someone is about to divulge gossip that would put you in an awkward position. You say, "Please don't tell me." And the potential divulger buttons it, she says.

But unfortunately, "You can't control what other people say or do," says Ms. Fox, who runs a Toronto consulting company Louise Fox Protocol Solutions.

And the reality is, with the Olympics, unless you want to be a hermit, "you're kinda screwed," Mr. Smith says.

So preserving the suspense is going be up to you, he says. "If you don't want to know, then you are the one who has to take the steps."

Ms. Fox warns against getting too caught up in morphing your life to indulge your technology choices. The PVR may just be the latest device that promises to make our lives easier, yet complicates them more.

"You could be sitting on the train and overhear something. Should it really ruin your life? No. Give yourself a break," she says. "People are getting way too serious about too much stuff."

In fact, perhaps the most graceful thing to do may be to opt out of the PVR game all together. Some Olympics fans, like Toronto's Will Zednicek, are planning to take a few days off work and watch the Games at home, live.

While Mr. Zednicek, who works in information technology, is well-versed in the art of the PVR sports blackout, he says he is not willing to contort his life around the Olympics. "I want to watch as much as I can, live," he says.

Problem solved.