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An Offer Tivo Owners Can't Refuse
An anonymous reader pointed us to this little tidbit. The BBC paid Tivo (company slogan: "TV Your Way") to force owners' boxes to record some new program they wanted to push, which looks incredibly exciting. UK Tivo owners seem a little upset.
I fail to see what the big hoopla is about, or why this is even posted to Slashdot. After all, this isn't even the first time that this has happened.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
Makes me wish we had a satellite dish PVR instead. At least then we wouldn't be dependent on phone calls to keep our PVR working.
No, it doesn't. The thread mentioned above, covers this in detail in TiVo's response ....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
If you had followed the third link, you'd find that the stuff TiVo pushes on you doesn't get counted against the 40 hours because they reserved a portion of the hard drive for that kind of crap.
Apparently, tivo notes that from day one there was a reserved section of the harddrive for this "feature." So that this recording won't take up any of your 40MB available for recording shows. It also states you are never forced to watch this promo, and that if you had something else scheduled, or were watching tv at the time (it will prompt a viewer and the viewer can say yes or no, in which after a minute goes by it assumes yes, but can be still stopped later) It won't record the show. Obviously this is a form of money making from TiVo? But I don't see where the downfall is?
Invasion of privacy probably not. However unless they were very careful in the wording of their contracts and people didn't read very will it might well constitute a criminal offence under the computer misuse act. It may also be possible to take civil action against them if as reported it recorded material intended for adults and let children play it ignoring the parental controls.
tivo has downloaded a car commercial and most recently a sheryl crowe video/advertisement. the only difference between this and uk stuff is that uk is actually recording a broadcast show, whereas the US ones were downloaded through the phoneline during the nightly update. it shows up on the main menu as another option, but does not clutter up your now playing menu. also, the uk discussion group states that tivo will not override any existing show recordings to record these specials. i presume it will override your thumbs up preferences though.
"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."
From the TiVo FAQ:" In 2.5, there is a unofficial, undocumented way to turn on 30 second skip. This will turn the "skip to end" (->|) button into 30 second skip. However, this means you will lose the current functionality of that button, including skip to tickmark while in RW/FF. To try it, enter the following sequence of buttons: Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select. The code will toggle 30 second skip off/on so enter it again to switch back if you don't like it. Also, after any reboot, the button will revert to original standard functionality." This seems to work best if you do it when a prerecorded program is being played...
Well it depends a lot on your preference of UI and what features you hold dear. I have a DirecTivo and it rocks. Here is a small breakdown on DirecTivo vs. ReplayTV:
DirecTivo:
-Dual Tuners (record 2 shows at once)
-Costs $99 for new DirecTV subscribers
-Easy to use Interface (Yes, my Linux-running friends, this is a Good Thing)
-Direct digital MPEG2 recording straight to disk, results in ONLY high quality recordings which not only look better, but take up less disk space
ReplayTV:
-Commerical skip
-Local LAN Replay-to-Replay streaming
-Internet Video sharing with friends
I would suggest going to a local electronics store and playing with the interfaces and seeing which one you like more. I had my Tivo first so the ReplayTV interface drives me batty. I might feel differently if I had purchased a ReplayTV first, I don't know.
ReplayTV and Tivo both have vibrant online communities (Replay's and Tivo's) where you can find all kinds of information, good and bad, about the various models. The Tivo community is HUGE with literally hundreds of knowledgeable people (including several Tivo employees) contributing hacks and help constantly.
No it doesn't force you to play it. It doesn't even force you to *record* it. It will only record it if it's doing nothing else. It does not take up any recording space allocated to the user. In fact the only intrusion is that you get an extra choice in your menu of recorded programmes
Now, this is a scheme for them to make money with minimal intrusion. I honestly can't see anything wrong with this as it is not intrusive in the slightest
Again, read the article
The reserved space doesn't come out of your record space.
When the box says it's a 15 or 30 hour box, it's a 15 or 30 hour box. You are guaranteed 15 or 30 hours for recording -- the reserve is always reserved, and is not figured into that number. There's no wool being pulled over your eyes, and it was never promised for your use.
Argument two, I can't respond to as I haven't ever had anything paused when something was scheduled. However, it would seem the TiVo's common sense would dictate if you've got the buffer paused, it shouldn't touch the channel.
You can get just the Sci-Fi channel (or any of about 50 other channels) without getting any other channels bundled in.
It requires a C-Band satellite dish. You know, the Big Ugly (Useful) Dish.
It also requires an analog satellite receiver with a VideoCipher II card.
Sci-Fi channel subscriptions are about $10/year, and you can choose which programming broker you deal with.
Added bonus: The picture and audio quality are great. This is the same signal that is fed to cable companies and cable-on-a-stick (DirecTV, Dish).
Downside: It's not much help if you live in an apartment building or have a local zoning restriction forbidding dishes > 1 meter in diameter (5 feet is about the practical minimum size for a C-Band dish, depending on your location).
Bzzt, but thanks for playing our game.
A TiVo runs the hard drive 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's recording 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It takes no more electricity to grab a promo than it does for it to sit there on the last channel your watched and waste time.
If you're concerned about electricity loss, then you'd better unplug your PVR when it's not scheduled to be recording something.
Here's a little tidbit for those of you with the same kinds of gripes about Sheryl Crow.e bruary/001372.html
http://darwin.codefab.com/pipermail/random/2002-F
That link provides a list of TiVo Backdoor Codes.
To remove the clips from a TiVo 2.5 unit, first enable Backdoors by entering "B D 2 5" (one space between each character) into the 'Search By Title' and pressing ThumbsUp.
After enabling Backdoors, enter the following code from the ToDo List:
- Thumbs Down, Thumbs Down, Thumbs Up, Instant Replay
This will put all those little clips from TeleWorld into the ToDo List and will allow you to delete them.
Granted, this doesn't free up any space for you, but it at least deletes the entries for BestBuy and Sheryl Crow from the Showcases. Maybe even from the main menu (I don't know because mine is already gone).
Just a bit of info for those fellow TiVo users.
if you pause it it starts recording what you were watching. you stated yourself that it will not record the promo if you are already recording something...
Actually, you misunderstand. TiVo is always recording a 30-minute buffer of the current channel. This 30-minute buffer is also outside the 30-hour space because of this. If you pause live TV, it doesn't begin recording. It's always recording. In fact, you can rewind live TV. Pausing live TV just stills the last image on the screen, and "bookmarks" your place in the buffer. If you leave it paused for more than 30 minutes, it'll unpause and start playing the buffer from the beginning (the spot you bookmarked)
I believe that if the TiVo is paused when it wants to change the channel, the default is 'yes' if you scheduled a recording, and 'no' if it's making a suggestion. Don't know how it handled this situation for the promo.
My main point is that there's a difference between the live buffer and an actual recording. TiVo is recording the 30-minute buffer 24/7; and, to be clear, it's always the last 30 minutes of the current channel. If you change channels, the buffer is wiped instantly.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
TiVo has a standby mode, but it isn't a power saving mode - its sole purpose is if you use RF out (instead of the RCA cables), putting the TiVo in standby makes the RF out be a pass-through for the RF in, so you can watch live TV on your TV (or VCR or whatever you have connected downstream of the TiVo). The TiVo will continue to record. The power savings of standby mode is almost zero. (The power LED does turn off, so I guess there's some savings there.)
Insert wit here.
I was slightly annoyed by this "Sheryl Crow video", more so than the Joe Montana/Ronnie Lott Tivo marketing (That is from Tivo who I pay, but the Sheryl Crow stuff is from BestBuy).
But, it did make me enable back doors and the feature that lists the content in the "Now Playing" screen so that I could delete it. When you do this, you can also see the full unsplit version of the program it recorded (more on this below).
As far as I know, this content gets stored seperately from the normal media, a special reserved bit of hd space designed for this stuff (/icebox/).
Also: It does NOT download this content through the modem. In my area, Tivo is sent instructions to record from the Discovery channel every Monday and Thursday at around 4:30 AM. This program (listed as "Advanced Paid Program" or "Teleworld") is something that Tivo pays for and is testing for use in delivering schedule info. When the Tivo watches this channel, it blanks out the screen so that you can not see the data and or video, or hear it.
Right now, from what I can tell, it always starts with a black & white display with what looks like a moving bar code or binary block display that I assume the Tivo can read for its information. Following this is normal video that it then saves to disk. The leading data also contains instructions to the Tivo on out to split the video (where/when/what details/text to give the program) into seperate entries, and what to name the new menus where they will be accessable from, and when to make the menu appear. Much of it sits silently waiting for the moment to appear.
The same content appears at that time slot multiple times, and with different orders of the video. This allows the tivo to miss one and get it later (if you were recording something else that day/time). I suspect there are other time slots used as well.
I am not sure how I feel about this, but I am interested in the fact that it can get its schedule info this way as that should mean less calls at some point, and could open the door to some open source version of Tivo that can piggy back on this data.
At least with backdoors enabled, I can delete the content in 2 clicks.
-----Kermit
Tivo does this in the states too. On a Tivo remote there's a button that looks like taht retarded little square tivo thing (I think it's supposed to be an evil mutant TV set) You push that button to get to the main menu. Then you can select "Now Playing", which is the stuff that you have recorded manually (plus the stuff that tivo suggests based on your veiwing profile), and there's a "Showcase" selection, which is where stuff like "This month on HBO" and the Sheryl Crow preview is located. This information is seldom longer than 1/2 hour total length, and is considered part of the 2 gigs of space that tivo has for 'system' stuff. Tivo isn't decieving customers, it's using advertising as an alternate source of revenue, and it's opt-in advertising, for chrissakes. I'm not forced to watch these updates, I usually don't even know that they're on my tivo, and I don't care.
But I've turned into a tivo zealot as of late, so take this with a grain of salt.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.