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AOL's Mystro TV vs Tivo?
admiral2001 writes "Here is is a NYTimes story about AOL-Time-Warner's plans for a TiVo-killing 'Mystro TV' (nytimes annoying free registration required). They plan to begin rolling this out sometime in the next two years. Their major features are the simple pause, rewind, and fast forward that all PVRs have. However, they've taken the obvious stance to "let[s] networks set the parameters, dictating which shows users can reschedule, and it also creates ways for networks to insert commercials." The article even mentions how they could get an advantage in pushing their product because "viewers could try out Mystro TV by pushing a button on their remote"."
I think not. The whole point of TiVo is that it lets users reschedule shows and skip commercials to their ***own*** liking.
I don't think this will be a successful product anytime soon, unless AOL bundles the appliance with its 1e6 hours free cds.
Just like DivX was supposed to be the DVD-killer, right? I'm as likely to buy this as I was to buy into DivX--which is to say, not happenin'.
Industry seems to think it can lead consumers around by the nose, telling them, "We know what's best for you." Sometimes it succeeds; but when an obviously-good idea like Tivo beats drek like this to the punch, it's no contest.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Not a surprise-- major corporation takes great idea and releases their inferior spin on it, hoping that their marketing will let it triumph.
One reason that it's good to be Second to Market (not First) is that you can pick-and-choose on which features to compete with, and don't have to do as much work informing people.
First to Market: teach people what it is, and sell them on buying it
Second to Market: convince people to buy yours, not theirs.
A.
Mystro TV is a complex multimedia system that will require vast legal agreements between consumers, networks and other multinational corporations. Additionally, it will serve two masters (consumers and networks) rather than one.
TIVO is a hard drive with multimedia software.
Guess who wins?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Control is everything in this market. If the networks can control what I watch (like they did pre-Tivo) then the device is of little use to me. Tivo is user hackable and I can choose when and what I record. This should work even on top of AOLs system through the "analog loophole". The trick is that TiVo has to have the business savy to let consumers know what they are missing by having networks control what they watch. Personally I don't see what the big deal is anyway with the commercials. The Tivo can't skip them, I get the point of all of them even though I fast-forward through them. I watch the last Michael Jordan commercial many times. The user must have control. The user must be taught that he must have control. Only then will the market drive the best product to success. These are the same problems Open Source faces.
You forgot about the part where the network doesn't give a damn what you think or want. It's all about ad revenue.
I believe that the cable companies have lost the real opportunity to gain total control over what we watch, and how we watch it. People will often go for subscription services, but if they have to watch the advertisments anyway (I suppose they can still mute them), then why go with this option. With stand alone devices like TiVo, the owner of the device (read:end user) is in total control of what they record, how long they can store it, when they can watch it, and when they can re-schedule a recording.
The cable companies want to take that away from people, and it may have worked, if TiVo had not been so popular. I think the only VoD services that are going to fly will have to give the customer _Total_ control over what they want. I predict that this technology will be limited to VoD for pay-per-view movies, not regular television.
I used to hate computers, but then a server went down on me.
Personal video recorders like TiVo mock everything a television network is about. The devices let viewers thumb their noses at program schedules and, even worse, fast-forward past commercials. To many at the networks and studios, it is a cruel joke that could drive them out of business.
I think the cruel joke is the horrible load of advertising I'm put through to watch generally tasteless, unorginal, mediocre programming. If the TV networks can't adapt to the new style of TV, then they deserve to go out of business.
"I only speak the truth"
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but Mystro TV prevents consumers from making, storing or sharing copies
If it comes in a cable through the wall, someone can descramble, store, compress, and distribute it. What in the world would keep me from attaching my TiVo to this thing (which may just be my cable box with Mystro-enabling chips) and TiVo-ing channel 3?
Besides, this thing will never fly, because it would require every TV show to give licensing agreements to AOL/Time Warner. Then, A/TW will have to have a central server that talks to every cable provider in the US. Uh huh...good thing I can TiVo past this on CNN tonight.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
From the article Or one household might see a commercial for a luxury car while another sees a pitch for an economy model. "Increase the effectiveness of advertising by sending different ads to different homes," the demonstration promises.
This cannot be achieved till the networks collect personal information, spending habits, viewing habits and the like. We all loathed realplayer and windows media player for calling up home about the clips we watch. This is far bigger and more ugly.
From the article: Mystro TV is a technology that uses a cable system itself to provide viewers capabilities similar to computerized personal video recorders like TiVo.
So, does this mean that there is no extra machine to install, and a minumum service cost?
This may be a good thing actually. If you are able to select exactly the content you want to receive and when over the cable, then it's great, as long as the subscription price to cable remains the same. There used to be some widgets to automatically remove advertisements in VCRs. I think it worked by recognizing some special signal that happens when you switch from a program to an ad (among other thinks, the volume is louder). So with this AOL thingy you theoretically can attach a machine that removes the ads, and presto.
In other words (to summarize), I think AOL is aiming to stop people from buying Tivos by offering a cheaper service, and not to replace Tivos.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Those capabilities frighten many at the networks, studios and Hollywood talent agencies.... Letting viewers reshuffle the TV schedule cripples the network's ability to build audiences for new shows by putting them on after hits. More troublesome, the easy fast-forwarding promises to deprive networks of revenue by decimating the audience for commercials.
One more example of an entertainment industry that doesn't understand point-to-point and can't break the ingrained habits of centralized, "broadcast" control. This is what they're supposedly worried about? That scheduling flexibility offered to the audience will prevent people from having new shows scheduled down their throats? A generation of network schedulers is quaking in their boots -- but c'mon, you can't think of any better ways to promote a program? Movies become big hits, almost always, without any such scheduling "in." (The ones that get heavy TV ad time are usually crap: "Master of Disguise," anyone?) And what about the full half of the glass: the people who DO get to watch it who couldn't otherwise? Huh?
And note to TV execs: anything that actually reports, legitimately, the rate of viewing is going to "decimate" your revenues from commercials. We go to the bathroom. The same people who watch commercials for Bud Light and laugh now aren't going to stop. The rest of us hit "mute."
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
That's just what's always annoyed me about our VCR: it lets me skip ads and watch things when I want to. At last, a recorder that really recreates that "just watching normal TV" feel.
What a pack of dickheads.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
People aren't really "taking back" anything with Tivo (or any PVR) when they use it to skip comercials. They are using it to circumvent part of the revenue stream that networks and broadcasters use to make TV/cable more affordable. Once PVRs make commercials an invalid form of generating revenue, I would expect most standard channels to become more like premium channels...no commercials, but they cost more. Granted, PVRs also enable viewers to watch shows on their own schedule...that's just an issue of infrastructure and scalability. Until recently, "video on demand" hasn't really been feasible for networks, and it still has all sorts of scalability issues that Tivo solves nicely. So I don't think it's valid to have a "taking back our God-given TV rights" attitude about PVRs, but that doesn't make PVR's bad.
And why should they?
Seriously, there's a lot of talk around here like TV is some sort of god-given inalienable right. They produce a product, free of charge, for your consumption. You reimburse them by watching the advertising. People are saying TV lets you "take back" control of your viewing, but it's always been this way. You aren't "taking back" anything.
So far, only about 700,000 of the most avid television mavens have bought TiVo devices, ...
I am one of those 700,000 folks, but I respectfully disagree with the collection ("avid television mavens") I've been dropped into. I bought my TiVO because I'm *NOT* addicted to the TV and don't want to be. I wanted to choose what and when I watched. I wanted to STOP being a slave to the TV clock.
TiVo has 100% changed the way I watch TV (insert beginning of ad-like-comments). I no longer watch programs that I don't care about "to fill up space." I watch ONLY what I want, when I want.
Oh my yes; plugging in two cables is certainly cumbersome :(
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that they would say such a thing: this is the same company that stated above that by reducing the number of options you have for your PVR (what you can record, when, and what you can skip) they will attrack more customers from the TiVo ranch.
You get the super feature of Tivo - 80% of the rescheduling power and not having to know when your show is on to record it. You give up the commercial killing stuff and maybe 20% of the rescheduling power. They can sell it cheaper then Tivo, because they are funded by the networks to keep the commercials.
Will it sell? Depends on price.
If you tell me that for a one time payment of $50 bucks, I can get the rescheduling, then YES it will sell and Tivo will die.
If instead they try to price it as competitive with Tivo and then try to make Tivo Illegal, it will not do well, and hopefull the lawsuit will die.
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...just because you can see that a technology is going to hurt your business doesn't mean you should try and fight it. Throwing millions of dollers twords trying to make your customer's lives worse isn't going to help your business.
PVR's are going to kill the TV industry. We must stop them!
Linux is going to kill Microsoft. We must stop it!
File swapping is going to kill the music industry. Destroy it!
VCR's are going to kill the movie industry.
Video killed the radio star.
When did we go from a country where companies were supposed to compete on merrit to a country full of whining baby companies that don't want to change, inovate, or suffer any losses. Just because you can see that something is going to happen that will hurt your business, doesn't mean it's your job to try and stop it from happeneing. Lay a few people off to prepare for the impending belt tightening, don't hire a fleat of lawers and lobyists and wonder why your profits are down so much.
If you sell water don't sue mother nature expecting to stop the coming rain.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
user has no problem losing features as long as it is easy to use so I predict this will find a market amongst the several billion unwashed AOL users. I am not giving up my gener1 TIVO until I am quite DEAD, but I also use my ATI card as a nice PVR so I am not the demographic they are shooting for anyways. The only thing we here at sladhdot can do is tell our families and the people I am sure we all support about it.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Sounds like Mystro TV is not a personal video recorder, it is an on-demand television system. Networks are probably loath to give up schedule driven TV, but AOL might be able to force this one through by scaring networks with fear of personal video recorders and commercial skipping.
If you asked me what I loved most about my TiVO, I would say that it lets me watch what I want when I want to. And then second, I can skip commercials. Don't get me wrong, I hate commercials. But time shifting is much more important to me.
The ability to play back shows whenever I want (freeing me from network scheduling) is a major advantage of the technology. It seems like this is what Myestro TV is trying to do.
I can imagine that some shows will allow time shifting for a few days or a week, while others won't have restrictions. I think it could be more flexible than TiVO.
The problem with TiVO is that you have to know what you want to watch before you want to watch it. And you can only record one thing at a time (unless you have two TiVO's or a DirectTiVO). This causes my wife much fretting when she needs to decide between Buffy and Gilmore Girls. With this system, there is no problem. You can watch them both.
Another problem I have found with TiVO is that all the commercials are stale. When I get around to watching a Junk Yard Wars from last week, if I do happen to see a promo for something I might like, it is too late to record it. With this system, I might be able to find it in the archive, or at least when watching a week old show at least I would get up-to-date promos.
The advantages of TiVO are that you can skip commercials, and that you can store things indefinately. These will still be important to some users, so there will always be a market for a personal video recorder.
A completely on-demand television system creates many interesting things. There would be no more schedules, just when shows were available. Television contracts would be rewritten to pay for the amount of plays, not . You might be able to pay a premium to see an obscure show, but you would be able to see it. Commercials might be more geared to the viewer. Broadcasting standards might be lifted (since parental controls could be built into this).
Anyway, sounds interesting. Not that I would want to give up my TiVO.
I think not.
The whole reason I LIKE my tivo(s) is because I have freedom of choice. I watch what *I* like to watch, when I want to watch it. I don't need a 'MAX HEADROOM' network executive dictating to me when I can watch anything-- including those repetitious commercials!!
I don't know about AOLTW's solution. But I recently got the Dish Network, with this receiver and I absolutely love it. I had purchased a replayTV first, and aside from the lack of an ethernet port, this is infinitely superior. The integration between the guide and the programming is excellent. The biggest beef I had with the Replay was the delay between the time I told it to change the channel and the time that the change actually happened. In addition, replayTV's guide kind of sucks, and I couldn't watch tv while surfing the guide like I can with this new unit. Best part? I got it for 50 bucks with my new dish service! and no extra monthly charge for the service either!
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
The problem with this is it assumes the ability to distinguish the difference between Mystro TV and TiVo (for example). But if people only know Mystro and nothing about TiVo, how will they find the restrictions to be annoying? To them they're not restrictions. They're not capabilities taken away from TiVo. They're improvments to regular TV.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
A large portion of the populace still thinks AOL is "the Internet".
If AOL spends a billion or two to give everyone a taste of Mystro - thereby convincing the Great Unwashed that PVRs are "like VCRs, but they suck, and have more ads" - and they've pre-empted TiVo from ever gaining traction.
Think about it - if the average Joe's first impression of a PVR was this thing, would he risk dropping another $299 on a TiVo?
If it costs AOL/TW a billion or two to wipe TiVo off the map, that's money well spent.
And how many people out there still have VCR's that are flashing 12:00? Seriously, connecting a phone line can be too complicated for some people, especially since most homes don't have a phone jack next to the cable line. Plus, don't forget that you have to program it up to know what your area code is, how to dial, etc, etc, etc. My Replay took about 20 minutes to get fully set up the first time I turned it on. A lot of consumers don't have the patience for that.
With Mystro, you should be able to just plug it into the cable jack and connect it to the TV. The cable company will do the rest. You bet your patooty that it will be talking back up the cable line. It has to, actually, your shows are stored in the cable system rather than on the local box. Thus, to watch last nights Baywatch, you have to go to the up the network and tell the network to start downloading your show.
Mystro also has one other big advantage, you can potentially get the whole library of stuff that's been shown. If you missed Baywatch three weeks ago, you can potentially go back and watch arbitrary episodes. Of course, they have to get the rights to let you do that, but still, you don't have to worry about your disk filling up, shows coming on at the same time, power failures, etc.
They are AOL and they own Time Warner Cable. This means that they could just build this technology into the next generation digital cable boxes. So if you subscribe to Time Warner Cable, you own (or rent) this box once it is released. If they can cut sweet deals with the networks and advertisers, it is possible that the cost for the end-user is $0.00. So the end user gets some Tivo-like features, such as the ability to rewind/pause live-tv, record programming that they are allowed to record, etc. all for free.
Then average Joe wonders why he would spend money out of his pocket buying another Tivo box. Chances are he wouldn't unless he really wants to skip commercials and program/keep any programs he wishes. AOL is probably betting that average Joe who thinks AOL is the Internet will take the TV-network-driven free PVR over paying for Tivo.
If this strategy works, then Tivo is driven out of business.
No doubt "making" users of this device view commercials and somehow tracking who records what material is part of this scheme. What baffles me about products like this is they remove features I want, like namely the ability to FF past commercials in a recording, to record when and what I want without being monitored or tracked. Even if this product was free I wouldn't participate due to the monitoring that no doubt would be done by AOL/Time Warner.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
I actually wouldn't mind too much if they played ads while I had the show paused. I'm usually not in the room anyways, and besides, the ads would help prevent screen burn-in. :p
Of course, what I don't understand is why play ads while the show is paused at all? Think about the reasons you'd pause a show. Most of the time, it's because you're leaving the room to do something else (bathroom, get a snack, answer the phone, etc.) and aren't going to be paying attention to the screen ANYWAYS.
So, sure, play your ads while the show is paused. Just don't expect them to be watched...
However, how many times do you actually see marketing that pays attention to what people want and use? More importantly as perhaps the cause of this, is how many times you see advertisement that truthfully extolls its virtues, uniqueness and geneneral comparitive points to the alternatives? IOW, how often is marketing really useful to a willful consumer? Basically, marketing seeks to mimic the power of political propoganda. Instead of "buy this product because we can show how it fits what you need more than others" it is "hey, jump on this emotional bandwagon full of dancing clowns on the box, pretty sounds in our audio ads and sexy models lustilly draped over the product on our video ads. Ok, so seeing half naked chicks is pretty damn nice but like beer commercials that are usually very entertaining I still do not find myself drawn in any way towards that product now.
I enjoy attempting to be a "informed consumer" meaning that I seek out facts about the product and the vendor's merits in order to make the aptly named "informed decision." Ads I just randomly come across are mentally filtered for any content even if that content is only the type of service/product offered. Manytimes during the 80's and 90's the most, it became hard even then to figure out what that artsy or silly ad was even about. They just wasted money unless their sole purpose was to make a film short.
What is definitely not a waste of time is careful analysis of the product or service especially in concert with the analysis of the company and the current market all nicely packaged for me the layman. I don't really give a crap about statistical entry market cluster studies with extra ketchup on the side.
On the note of false advertising and false analysis it is important to note that the "anti" or "fanboy" mentalities (pretty much two sides of the same stupid coin) are worthless as a measure of a product or service's worth and thus are worthless in turn to the manufacturer (unless of course said manufacturer is mostly focusing on bullshit artistry to win over the sheepish masses as opposed to concern over quality). I find it amusing and yet sad how people do not realize the power they have in this. Take for example a review on Amazon for an upcoming video game. You will get a whole heap of dumbass thrown onto the review pile that is simply based on either expectations (positive or negative), hearsay or parroted factoids/rumours, and of course the fanboys and anti-this-game crowd. How is this information usefull except to depress anyone about the sad reality of sheepish stupid behavior in the average human?