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News on TiVo, "God's Machine"
Brace for incoming TiVo news!
rtphokie pointed out that FCC chair Michael Powell got a TiVo for Christmas and calls it
"God's machine."
Powell also said he wanted to share TV shows with his sister -- but he might have to violate the DMCA to do it: TiVo wants to
join the home network
(thanks Insomniac), but parr pointed us to
TiVo's Thursday press release
in which they assure us that "every TiVo Series2 DVR contains a unique public/private key pair," so only "designated" units within your home can share programs, you "cannot send content outside the home," and transfers over your home network will be encrypted (no sniffing!). Meanwhile, on the WB (part of AOL-TW), everything old is new again, as producers and advertisers work to create a live variety show with
built-in commercials (free reg. req.) (thanks eternal_software).
And if you missed our earlier TiVoesque stories, check 'em out:
TiVo-radio wanted,
HDTV TiVo,
and
TiVo Rendezvous. Whew!
Its annoying enough when you get the same jokes forwarded by e-mail from all your uncles and aunts. Now brace yourself for endless copies of the time Gilligan accidentally sleeps in the Skippers Hammock lining your inbox. Ah modern technology!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Um...which article in here, exactly, says that Powell wants to share programs with his sister but that he is aware he would need to break the DMCA to do it?
The sentence construction in the original posting suggests that Powell is actually aware of the law and its problems, and neither the article nor anything he as ever said proves any such thing.
Yes, it's semantics, but it's damn important semantics. One is playing what-if games where we say 'Gee, wouldn't it be k-rad cool if Michael Powell was breakin' the law, huhhuhuhuh?', the other makes a _clear-cut statement_ that an appointed government official is aware of the problems of a copyright law his department nor administration never gave a nod to.
Ha.
The post should read, 'Powell also said that he wanted to share shows with his sister. What Powell may not be aware of is that in saying so, he may ultimately have to break the DMCA to do it.'
If you're going to do so many stories on it, why not? And while you're adding icons, how about one for Google?
"So TiVo is going out of it's way to assure it's customers that the device has been purposely and explicitely designed so as to be less useful to them. What the fuck is going on here?????"
I'd say they're covering their asses to make sure they can stay in business. They know that the hackers can figure out ways to extract video from it and send it wherever they please. As long as they stay on the good side of the DMCA/copyright law/whatever they won't have to deal with 500lb media gorillas flinging feces at them. Can you blame them? I'd much rather find a hack on the internet to extract/share video than risk having my Tivo go lifeless because of lawsuits.
(Although I've heard there's a 'plan B' if Tivo does go under...)
Keifer enters president Palmet's office after a gun fight, blood stains on his shirt.
President Palmer: Here, try this new Tide detergent.
Keifer sprinkles Tide on shirt, blood dissapears.
Keifer, smiling towards camera: Wow! Tide really gets those stubborn blood stains out!
The media industry is already making the move into product placement as the means to make money. We've seen it in movies for years, but most TV shows and music have avoided it due to commercial sponsorship. The industrty realizes we can make digital recordings and edit out the commercials, so why not embed the commercials in the shows themselves. It's only a matter of time before Pepsi's new ad campaign involves their name being mentioned in 8 of the Top Ten songs on the radio....plus your still stuck with the advertizing if you buy the CD, or just "steal" it off the internet. Could be a good thing for the file swappers if they can now argue that the artist was paid by the advertizers
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I have a Tivo. It has absolutely made TV interesting again. Ignore the obnoxious monthly fee arguments you always see in these threads because they are almost always started by someone who has never used a Tivo. However, the best thing you can do is go to google for 'replay tivo comparison'. You'll end up finding something like this. Feature by feature breakdown, and a pretty good guide. hth.
Let's look at this in the abstract. People love TiVo because it gives them the ability to watch entertainment they enjoy free from the distraction of intrusions they do not enjoy, and at a time that is convenient for them. Content owners do not like TiVo for precisely the same reasons. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the shows themselves.
... television shows?
Content owners (TV studios, "Hollywood") probably couldn't care less if people time-shift television. Why? Because for broadcast at least, the TV shows are almost the precise definition of a loss leader. If you time-shift your show, the local station or cable provider that is playing it has still paid the license fee to run the show. There is no change in the net income from the show. The show generates no more or no less revenue than it did before. If the show is a money-losing venture in itself - which most of them probably are - the the show is no MORE of a money-loser because it's been moved out of its time slot.
(Now, there is the possible exception that time-shifting screws up the studios' ability to generate statistics about viewing habits, etc., which could impact relationships with advertisers, but, well, keep reading.)
So, if a television show's movement through time has no impact or minimal impact on its revenue generating capacity for the studio which creates it (please note, the actors don't care because they've already been paid), why are the studios upset?
Advertising moolah.
This is not a revolutionary observation. I'm aware of that. But they're so angry about you time-shifting because you want to get rid of exactly the thing that gives them the profit motive to make the show in the first place. They can try product placement and inline ads as partial replacements for traditional block advertising, but the 30-second ad spot is still the cash cow.
And you're getting in the cash cow's way.
So the studio is upset. But let's take a step back and look at what the combat really means. (This is where this post gets flamable, so if you liked it before, stop reading.) TiVo owners are demanding a right, and spending their hard-earned money, to time-shift
What value are they to anybody? The studios don't care because they don't represent any real revenue. They will only make good shows if they think those shows will attract eyes to see ads crammed into the spaces between show segments.
And do they represent any real value to you? Eh, you might chuckle or cry or gasp or cower when watching, but after the 30 minute sitcom is over, what have you gained? A new skill? Truly reduced stress? Enlightenment? Not likely.
In fact, and paradoxically, the only benefit to the viewer in a usual TV watching session is in the ADS. It's like the old advice on how to pick up women: "Just walk up to one and ask her if she wants to f***. Nine times out of ten you'll get slapped, but that tenth time.. wowee..." That's how the advertisers see you. And with good reason: because 1 time out of 10, you're going to see an ad and think "Hey, that's neat..." And you might go buy it. If you ignore the ad the other 9 times, the advertisers don't really care, because there are 280 million other people out there deciding whether "Can you hear me now?" is going to provoke them to get or keep Verizon phones.
So, you actually derive more tangible benefit from that one time you actually are moved by an ad than you do from all the sitcom watching in the world, except in those instances where the sitcoms are so insidious as to be indistinguishable from the ads themselves.
My solution? No tv. I don't have to pay the cable company $520 a year for television I don't watch. I don't have to pay $400-6,000 dollars to replace my ten-year-old TV when it finally dies. I don't have to spend hours upon hours sitting in front of the brain control box, um, TV soaking up advertising. And I don't have to spend money to fight the advertising by buying a TiVo. I lose some entertainment, sure, but I have books, family, the Internet, and even my own imagination.
I'm not passing judgment on anybody, except the advertisers who attempt to monopolize your mind. But do me a favor, you Slashdot people I don't even know... Try going without TV (and TiVo) for a month. Completely without TV.
See if you really miss it.
"Built-in commercials" worked in the days of old because there was no such thing as syndication. A program aired once (usually live) and that was it. So you had sponsors paying for that airtime, and they got their advertising in.
Not so today.
When a program is recorded, space is left for the commercials. They usually don't even know who the sponsors are yet. Then the commercials are added later. A season or two later, if it's a popular program, it's all picked up for syndication (a wild process involving conventions and stations and networks and lots of wheeling-and-dealing). The station or network airing the program in syndication will be putting in a completely different set of commercials.
See the problem here? If the commercials are irrevocably embedded into the program, they can't be removed and replaced during syndication. That means it won't syndicate at all, because the cable networks and superstations of the world won't be able to put in their own commercials. They won't be able to make back the money they paid for the programming. So, they'll either choose other programming, or if this style of programming becomes dominant, the smaller stations and networks may go away entirely.
It's kind of like forcing people to take a web browser or media player with an operating system, whether they want it or not. It puts people's eyeballs where you want them in the short term, but it screws up the flexibility for pretty much everyone else in the universe.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to this show that is based (in part) around ads for products. I think these genius advertisers are finally getting the hint that people are phasing out traditional commercials (just like how we rarely notice banner ads anymore) and they're scrambling for something else.
There are already plenty of TV shows with ads in them - look at sports, for instance, with ads all over the various stadiums, and even with soccer which goes commercial-free and has an ad of the sponsor under the clock. I figure it's just a matter of time before regular TV programming adopts this form of advertising, with a little logo in the corner, or maybe shrinking the screen down ala MTV to give you some ad along the side and bottom of the screen.
And we'll probably get used to it, just as we've gotten used to the logos for the channel that are always on now..
we spend so much time bitching about stupid pols writing bad laws, but has anyone spent the time to setup the kewl things they are trying to legislate into vaporware????
maybe, we need to start a campaign to give great geekware to legislators and government officials for the sake of winning their hearts (or wherever powell's god lives) to our causes. if we can make enough lawmakers into violators of the DMCA and other heinous laws on the books, or proposed and show them why we feel strongly about this. or even have the EFF donate linux boxen to lawmakers. we will gain an advantage.
at any rate. i propose we start by giving a copy of the Linux Bar Monkey to Ted Kennedy and go from there .. . .
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
What Powell may not be aware of is that in saying so, he may ultimately have to break the DMCA to do it.
Except for the fact that it has nothing to do with the DMCA. Distributing copies of home recordings is a violation of plain old copyright law, law which has been on the books since 1790.
But making snide remarks about a 200-year-old law makes you look kind of like an anti-establishment wacko, while snide remarks about the DMCA are always socially acceptable.
I write in my journal
I have a ReplayTV. It's the PVR for folks who like more features, but less stability. :)
Built-in LAN access. Ability to offload shows (MPEG2, no funky wrappers or encryption) to PC. Stream shows from one ReplayTV to another, or (with third-party GPL software, like DVArchive) stream to a PC. Or stream from a PC's archive of shows back to your ReplayTV. Better quality video capture than Tivo, better search. Not so good season / show recording options as Tivo (the inability to determine if a show is a repeat or not, or even if you already have a copy of that show on the unit, is a stupid oversight). But there's strong indication that ReplayTV is going to add features in the near future via software upgrade.
ReplayTV also has Commercial Advance (works 70% of the time; I don't use it) and 30-second skip, which I use religiously. Tivo also has 30s skip, but it's an unsupported software hack that they could disable at any time.
While most of what you say is very true, this is only a problem if viewed with eyes that are unready to change the business model from the ground up (which admittely includes just about the entire media industry).
If shows could be entirely paid for by embedded advertisements, then the business model the distribution of the shows would have to be different. Firstly, the producers would want to have as many viewers as possible, spreading over the Internet would be greatly encouraged. Secondly , while it is true that there would be no reason for syndicated channels to pay for the material if they cannot tack on their own advertisements, the original sponsors and producers, again looking for as many viewers as possible, would want the shows syndicated. So the business relationship would be inverse: producers would pay channels to show there shows.
The question that remains, of course, is that of the efficiency of the adveritising. It is obvious that if an advertisement in embedded in the program instead of tacked on, it will be less flexible both geographically and temporally (difficult to change for different markets, as well as for different times), meaning that advertisers are less likely to pay as much as they do today per viewer of the add. But there are several things that help moderate this. Firstly, brands and products are much more global today then when television started - there is probably no shortage of companies that are willing to market there product at every viewer of Friends (or whatever mind numbing sitcom we are being spoon fed this week). Secondly, a loss in advertising revenue does not necessarily mean the end of TV - there are what, five?, different Discovery channels in cable packages these days, will it really be the end of the world if they were forced to scale that back to one or two? Television has become much more efficient in just the last ten years or so - it is now possible to produce material for much less per possible viewer then it was previously.
Writing off the concept of embedded advertisements is premature. The nature of the information age (barring the bonds that MS and co. want to place on it) is that people are in control, down to the micro level, of what content they consume. In the long term, it is not possible in such a society to try to make people pay attention to things they do not desire - making it seem to them that they do desire it is advertisements only hope.
You make a good point, but you missed the important part. The value derived from watching tv is the entertainment.
You mention you like to read, as do I. I also happen to prefer to buy my books over borrowing them (although I do borrow some), just because I like having my own little library. So, everytime I, or you, buy a non-reference book, we are essentially paying for entertainment. Reading a book, despite what some think, does not necessarily improve you in any way (you can pick up new skills and reduce stress just as well with tv as with a book), you won't find "enlightenment" (assuming there is such a thing anyway).
Ever go to the movies, a concert, a play? All of these are like tv, in the fact that you are paying for the entertainment. Hell a lot of vacations are really people just paying for entertainment, of course there's a more tangible component to that entertainment.
Fine, if you don't get much enjoyment out of tv, don't watch it. I, however, find some shows rather amusing, and enjoy watching them. The great thing about tv is that it only requires partial attention, I often do something else while watching it. You can't do that with a book.
By the way, I never got into the habit of watching commercials (even long before TiVo). I'll gladly flip or do something else for those minutes, assuming I can't find a "filler show" to use during commercials, before I will sit there and absorb the advertising.
Is it possible that you just haven't found the right things to watch?
Maybe you didn't intend it, but to me your post comes off a bit "holier-than-thou", which is a sense I get from a lot of people who don't watch tv. I have gone a month without tv. I often don't watch it while I'm travelling. Still, I do enjoy it when I'm at home, and not doing anything in particular. You could make a similar case for surfing the web, it's not much better than tv...
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Two things. First of all no one is forcing you. Second of all 600$ is dirt cheap. There are som 178 episodes (not counting all the extra stuff, like behind the scenes) of TNG. That is about 3 bucks per episode. If you can't afford that, you either live in Afghanistan or you are simply to cheap to buy, no matter what they were charged.
I sincerely doubt it. At
Some people will not be satisfied before you can get it for free. And then they will probably bitch because the download is too slow.
For
Rumagent
So, I've started wondering lately. Is the TiVo going to cut down on the TV I do watch?
I got my wife a TiVo for our anniversary last year. She LOVES it.
We spent the first while or three configuring the thing, then selecting all the shows we liked. We told it to record EVERYTHING, first runs and reruns. We spent hours a day watching it. We recently realized how much time we spent watching it. For 2 months, we spent 2-4 hours a weekday watching TV, and more on the weekend. It was entertaining, but there was more to life. Part of it was just getting through it so we would have the hard drive space (on an 80 hour unit) to not miss anything.
So, we pared it down to the TV shows we really enjoy, and first runs of those.
I'll be honest. We fast forward through the commercials. Not all of them, we actually stop, rewind and play ads that catch our eye with a visual joke or breathtaking nature view (or the like). Mostly those are for products, like a cola or a car or other tangible thing. I don't think we've ever stopped to watch a TV ad for a TV program. Which brings me to this observation: If we're not exposed to new shows, how will we decide what new shows to record? Will we just reach the point where the TiVo records a show a week that's requested? What happens when that's cancelled?
We don't watch TiVo's recommendations. They're just WAY off. TiVo may as well get paid to record episodes that the networks want us to see that we haven't specifically "thumbs downed" as far as I'm concerned, they're that relevant most days.
So, now we limit ourselves to an hour of TV a day. We see only the show or two that we really want to see, and nothing else. When the new season stops, will we bother to turn the TV on? I don't know. With Firefly and Birds of Prey going away, we may not bother.
So, here's my real question. If TiVo is going to help us find only shows we want to watch, are we going to get to the point where TiVo hasn't found any first runs that we want to watch? Will we then not turn the TV on every day? If we get to that point, will we eventually just forget that we have a TV?
I did a little write up on epinions to describe the machine shortly after we got it because I didn't see many reviews on the TiVo 2. (If you're not into blatant plugs, don't click the link -- it's my write-up.)
"every TiVo Series2 DVR contains a unique public/private key pair," so only "designated" units within your home can share programs, you "cannot send content outside the home," and transfers over your home network will be encrypted (no sniffing!)
I read the "TiVOGuard" portion of the press release. But it leaves me curious about how they determine the bounds of one's 'home'. Is this subnet masking or something that determines what IP addresses are inside my home? What if someone wants to designate their own weekend cottage or parents' home as shareable? Care to speculate?