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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 think a million Tivo subscribers returning their boxes would be a fine educational example for Tivo, BBC, and any marketroids who read about this and thought "oooh...now that's a way to increase our market share".
Really. It's a piece of electronic equipment with a power switch. Turn it off and send it back.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Unless the agreement I assume UK Tivo owners have to agree to for service covers this, isn't this some form of invasion of privacy?
Oh wait. I forgot, that's all gone in the UK.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
What youi are missing is the concept of "control". If I paid for it, it's mine. And it's control belongs only to me.
Guess I won't bother buying a TiVo, as much as my wife wants one.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
People, please. Read the link to the UK TiVo community before posting in this thread. You're all asking the same questions over and over again. But since none of you will, since people on the web seem averse to actually reading...
1. It doesn't take up space, all TiVo's have reserved space on their drives for this kind of thing that you would never have been able to record on anyway. You're not getting any less space than you paid for.
2. It will NEVER delete anything you had to record this.
3. You DON'T have to watch it.
4. It will NEVER record this instead of something you wanted it to record.
I have a TiVo. This program is on my menu. Who the hell cares? I ignore it, and in a couple of days it'll disappear.
By forcing your unit to record a certian show at a certian time Tvio people are "using up" your recording capacity for that interval. That is, the tuner is in use and can not, therefore, be recording any other show.
Think about it. Network A doesn't want you record/time-shift the show on an opposing network B. They buy-up your recorder for an hour.
Better yet, say "The Friends Series Finaly" (sp?) has a huge ad dollar per minute on the advertising. So NBC buys-up the Tvio tuners to record "animal planet" for that timeslot. Now if you want to see the all-important last episode you *MUST* watch it live and you *CAN'T* time-shift it or save it.
The issue is not whether there is a disk reserve that doesn't affect your viewing time, it is whether there is a "tuner reserve" that means that this "feature" doesn't busy-your-box against all other use.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press