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ReplayTV DVR to Remove Features
KarlTheGhoul writes "D&M Holdings Inc. on Tuesday said its new ReplayTV digital television recorder will not include controversial features such as automatically skipping commercials and sharing shows via the Internet." This is a confirmation of our earlier story. Their new ad slogan will be "Costs More, Less Useful".
In that case I will buy a Tivo
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I think that eventually the average consumer will be clued in to things like these and the manufacturers will start feeling the pain. So we'll either have to go with an "illegal" solution, or the folks who make this products will give Big Media the finger. It's all downhill from there...
can't skip commercials? guess I'll have to skip buying their product. time-shift would still let you fastforward through - just start watching your program 30mintues later so you have an ad buffer.
Or maybe their new slogan should be "Trying Not To Go Bankrupt a Third Time!".
Those features got them sued into oblivion. They'll get anyone sued into oblivion frankly, because the media companies won't abide it, and you're going to have a hard time convincing a judge that it's not a copyright violation to share shows.
Removing the commercial skip bit is lame, since there are VCRs that do this already and they've never been attacked. But D&M is obviously hoping to get friendlier with the media companies, and this is another thing they hate.
That said, as best I can tell they just removed the two features that made Replay preferable to TiVo... and the rest of their software is inferior. So I don't quite get where they hope to position the brand at.
They couldn't beat Tivo in the DVR game with more features and a lower price.
Now, Tivo's got the awesome Home Media Option out that lets you play MP3's on your Tivo, which Replay never had.
So now, best case scenario, they offer less features as Tivo at the same price? Or maybe a little lower?
What's the business model here again?
What's your damage, Heather?
I don't think ReplayTV is going to be able to take over TiVo's spot in the market unless they are able to offer somthing TiVo doesn't. I guess they are in a tight spot not wanting to get sued, but I think this is a move in the wring direction unless they like being second best.
However much I'd love to skip commercials, I can definitely see why advertisers and more importantly the networks are concerned (and you should be able to, too.) If fewer people watch the ads, the ads are worth less money - money which goes to producing shows. I'd be the first in line to sign a "Ray Romano gets paid too much" petition, but that's besides the point - without income from advertising (or with reduced income) I predict we'll either see show quality decline or cable costs go up. All it'll take is a few more years, when DVR comes built in every TV (or nearly everyone has a box.)
~Berj
Their new ad slogan will be "Costs More, Less Useful"
Is that really necessary from a (presumably) unbiased editor?
Trolling is a art,
Doesn't automagically skip comercials doesn't mean you can't do a 15/30 second skip or jump forward. Just means that the box won't have the current feature which autodetects and skips commercials. Obviously, a compromise solution, but not earthshattering or skybreaking.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
...from gaining useful technology. There is something seriously wrong with the interactions of corporations between themselves and then that impact refected onto society...
Perhaps a lack of a personality, ethics, independent goals, etc. Perhaps a rethink of the legal fictions would be in order.
The internet sharing feature was crappy because it was slow and there was too much work involved to get something that you can get from Bit Torrent faster. The automatic commercial skip was flaky (I turned it off right away anyway) because you always ended up with snippets of show missing. As long as I have my 30 second skip button on my remote than I'm happy.
Sound waves should be free!
If Replay drops these features in the 5500 series, it will just create a very hot secondary/used market for the older 5000 models that still have Commercial Advance & Send Show features.
So in my opinion, there's the possibility that they not only remove these features from new units, but also retroactively from the older 4000 and 5000 series also. Potentially very bad news for people who have shelled out $250 for a lifetime subscription recently...
The nice thing about ReplayTV and Tivo is that they are "appliances". You buy it, take it home, plug it in, and it just works. It does it's one task very well, and you don't have to worry about it.
The "bonus" has turned out to be the "hack-ability" of both Replay and Tivo. You can easily upgrade to larger hard drives. The networked models allow shows to be copied to a computer.
A PC-based PVR will be even more flexible, but it is not yet a consumer-level "appliance".
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
Many people have proposed doing DVRs with old standard PCs using ideally, open source software. Sounds great, more flexible, everything wonderful.
Until you look at the power. Check how much more power that always-on PC takes than a standalone box. Here in California, for example, every watt of 24/7 power costs $1.13 per year or more. So a 200 watt PC costs over $200 per year to run, $150 more than say, a 50 watt standalone device. Not to mention the damage to the environment.
In other words, you can pay for the standalone device pretty quickly, even if you had a "free" PC just stting around.
Now you could fix this problem if you could arrange for the PC to go into a sleep mode when it doesn't have anything to do, at the cost of waiting a little longer to come up when you turn it on to watch something with the remote. This requires the PC have in it a sleep mode with a clock which allows you to say, "Wake up in 3 hours". How many have this? How many have coded for it.
The standalone device can also do this easily.
And you lose the "always recording something to spare disk space" feature that people love about the Tivo.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
So if I get up to go to the bathroom, or when I start flipping channels during commercials, I'm stealing?
Or is it the automagic skipping that has folks upset? When I see a commercial, I automatically skip it anyway.. so boom there. Sux for me. I'm a crook!
Thank you. Drive through. (:wq)
And THAT is why I will never own a Tivo or other device like it, I can never be sure that a week after I buy it all the things that made me buy the device will not be removed. With a normal consumer device it has a set featureset, I guess if I want a PVR it will have to be a home rolled one based on open data. Yes I realize how great things like season pass are but I have no assurance that they will be there after I purchase it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I still use my Tivo, but even before the day I bought it, I knew that Tivo's time was running out. Tivo tries to be a good product, but even from the beginning, it was explicitly clear that being the best it could be, was not quite the goal. They had "partners." They were at risk from incurring the wrath of advertisers and TV networks. So a balance had to be struck. I am glad that the balance was so far in my favor, and I have enjoyed my Tivo very much. But reminders of the compromise have always been present (don't get me started). And now it is clear that the situation with ReplayTV is no different.
Free Software is accountable to only one party: whoever uses it. Except for the finite supply of developer labor, there is no limit to how good it can be for the user. There is no party who will influence it toward being less good or force it to be less functional than what people want. There is no compromise, and there is no attempt to serve two masters.
If MythTV and Freevo don't already kick Tivo's and ReplayTV's asses yet, they inevitably will in the future. I don't know if the Tivos and Replays and Microsofts will still be around in this market a few years from now, but I do know that if they survive, it will be as crippled embarrassing parodies of the state of the art.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
As far as Replay being sued into bankruptcy twice. You MIGHT argue once, but that's a pretty lame excuse for Tivo to use to not include such groundbreaking and enjoyment-enhancing features as commercial skip and show sharing. I can't believe how some people will flaunt the limitations of their device and extol the controls of their parent company as if it were a virtue. "In my country you can't fileshare, but that's a good thing because I know my goverment does it because they care about me and don't want mean laywers to come and get me in trouble". This WILL create a hot market for older Replay boxes which support these features. Sharing shows with buddies is a great, great thing. I've seen many an episode I've missed because of this feature. Maybe with SonicBlue no longer in control, PlanetReplay.com will be able to get their buddy sharing requests back up (fingers crossed).
One last thing: Speaking of a 30 second advance button in the same context as a commercial skip feature is like saying a DVD player has fast forward because it has chapter advance. They do similar things, but they are not anywhere near the same feature. When commercial advance works (which is about 80%-85% of the time in my experience) you can watch a show without even being near the remote and never see a commercial. And when it doesn't work, it usually doesn't work for that show at all, so you can just treat it like the feature is turned off. I guess it's a shame they're taking it out, but I have mine, so the people who weren't early adopters are the real victims I guess.
My homebuilt PVR continues to work great! I can skip commericals, view content on every computer in the house, and I don't have to pay a monthy fee.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
That if DVRs continue to include commercial skipping software that cable prices would increase and the total number of ads would increase as well. Sucks to be poor.
Honestly, I'm glad to share my viewing habits. All it means is that the more I watch what I like to watch ... the better chance of it not being taken off of the air. It's a tradeoff, but it's one I'm fine with.