ReplayTV's Remote Remote

plasmar writes: "ReplayTV has announced a new service due to roll out this Fall that lets you control your ReplayTV unit from a Web browser anywhere in the world. Full story available here." Just what I need, someone reprogramming my settings. I come in from dinner, and all of a sudden I'm watching 30 hours of Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie Grill.

Comments

Wouldn't this be easily abused?

[vertical-limit]

Now, I don't own a ReplayTV, but a service like this seems really easy to abuse. We all know that crackers like to mess with anything they can get their hands on, and it doesn't seem it would it like be very difficult to crack this system. Imagine the havok that the script kiddies would wreck: people tape the wrong shows (hint: porn), people don't get any shows at all or get them all muted, people's TV keep incoherently flipping from channel and channel, etc.

Seriously, why would you want to control your TV from a web browser in the first place? Are some people so lazy that they can't even budge from their computer to adjust the volume? This all just seems like an invitation for script kiddies to mess with peoples' TVs. If I was a ReplayTV user, I'd be pissed.

Still, I can see how this would have some advantages, so hopefully ReplayTV will implement a secure-enough system (hint: security through obscurity never works!) that the lamer members of our population won't be able to ruin yet another new thing.

There is some potential here...

[UnixFerEver]

I think the real possibilities here lie in the user interface. The ReplayTV/TIVO are simple and easy to use, but not that powerful.

Add the web and some powerful database servers and you could do some pretty neat things:

a) Have it record every movie that Roger Ebert and Co gave 2 thumbs up to for ever.

b) You could quickly pull up a list of the top 400 sci-fi movies of all times, check the ones you liked and presto, they would be recorded if they ever came on.

c) etc...lots of possibilites...
Simplistic versions of these sorts of things exist or are coming to the set-top boxes themselves, but I think it will be tough to make them really work well.

ps - I'm a TIVO owner and love it. All you doubters should get one (or a replayTV) from circuit city or someplace else with a 30 day return policy and just give it a spin. On the down side, I no longer exercise or read books. sigh.

The hacker channel

[www.sorehands.com]

This will prompt The Hacker Channel.

It will get better ratings than Survivor and Alley McBeal's kissing Ling Scene. People will just hack into it and have every system out there record The Hacker Channel during sweeps week.

Talk about must see TV. :)