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TiVo Plans More Functionality Reductions
TiVo has been in the news recently with a couple of plans to make their service less useful than it could be: first, TiVos will now auto-delete pay-per-view and video-on-demand movies, and second, TiVo is making sure that you can't use a TiVo to view NFL games outside the specified market area. TiVo's lawyer explains.
it's only fitting that when I clicked this article it read "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
And I'll continue to not own a TiVo and download the shows I want to watch. Damn that internet! ;^)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'm just glad I have mythTV. Sure I might have a problem if I have to switch to digital cable, but I dont have to worry about people deleting my videos before i'm done with them.
-phixxr
ungggghhhh
I can see how they would do this to reduce their legal costs, but it has to be costing them subscribers.
(ie: parody of MSN's "More useful everyday" slogan, for the mods :-> )
I am the maverick of Slashdot
"The reason that TiVo has to auto-delete a PPV movie is because it will be available for sale on DVD later on. " Saw this whole thing coming...of course some gigantic shows that make alot of money off advertising (NFL), and big movie productions were eventually going to start complaining to TiVo...I knew it wouldn't last!!!
I don't understand the problem. With Pay Per View, you are QUITE SPECIFICALLY buying a license to watch a movie once. You are PAYing PER VIEW.
There's no ambiguity about buying physical media vs the content, about buying a license, and so on. You're paying to have a movie playing to your sat/cable box at a specific time and date. Done.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
http://www.byopvr.com/
I'm reading too many "Well I'm glad I don't get TiVo" or "This will KILL TiVo."
No, what will kill TiVo is all of television, TV, and sporting leagues suing the pants off of them for providing something that the can prove is illegal (like viewing NFL games outside the specified market area). This is a setup to allow people to share shows amongst TiVos, but making sure they have a legal basis to not get sued.
TiVo has already been hacked (and TiVo doesn't punish for it), so how long do you think it'll be between when TiVo allows program sharing and someone hacks it so you can avoid these new rules?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The new Tivos have a dvd-r. It would cut down on selling of sports dvds if you can just "burn your own" so content makers are going to freak. It still doesn't seem to restrictive since I don't watch pay per view or the NFL.
like this one tivo / burner from pioneer
...on my "Sleeper ISO" hacked series 2 DirecTiVo [info].
I remember Macrovision.
They're the ones who did that funny trick with DVDs so the screen brightness would flicker which prevented anyone from running the television signal through any device that adhered to a standard.
They're the asshats who slipped that little "suprise" in with Turbo Tax that one year. Appliance rape, I called it.
TiVo should take the moral high road and at least supply some screwdriver-accessible switch which forces the machine to ignore these things they talk of in the article. The lawyer said they weren't expecting Macrovision to Trojan horse TiVo with this, but I don't think he's ever watched his computer sit in the corner and cry while a baby C_DILLA grows inside of it.
Direct away from face when opening.
Series1 hasn't seen a software update in eons, so I'm assuming us early adopters are safe from this? I can't imagine TivoToGo would be supported on Series 1 anyway.
Blame the NFL, content providers, etc. Do you expect Tivo to say "FUCK YOU WORLD, WE'Z DOING IT OUR WAY!" They'd be sued out of existance.
I say screw tivo and it's brethren. Build your own system.
I own a DirecTivo yet am doing what you've suggested and am building a system for my GF and her kids (analog cable only).
MythTV + ASUS Pundit-R + PVR-350 + Fedora FC2
I'm now at about 30 hours of effort and climbing. Not that I care too much as I've learned about about the driver structure for ivtv, lirc, and xorg configs (don't get to play with non-MS GUI's too often). Short of it is, roll-your-own is only for those that have the technical expertise and can understand that apt-get of the pre2-100zz packages don't work with the latest firmware in card XYZ.
When compared to pulling a Tivo out of the box, plugging it in, going through the setup menu and having it work vs the current MythTV more MS MCE crip crap, it's a no brainer. Hopefully HTPC packages will become more refined, both in the OSS environment and off the shelf (I'd love to try MCE but am not willing to pay the cost especially on uncertified hardware).
Caving in to Macrovision and the content providers will be a blow to Tivo in the long run. It's unfortunate that even if there is a huge backlash from users, thier voices will be a pale echo of the majority of PVR users (those being provided by the cable companies, etc).
Sad day for Tivo indeed.
You just know that if TiVo hadn't implemented these restrictions that they'd have trouble with lawyers representing the NFL and the movie industry. It may make it less useful, but it's better than nothing. The real problem is the greed that dominates the entertainment industries and their attempts to jew every last dollar out of the hands of ordinary people. This move sucks, but don't blame TiVo.
All the NFL is asking TiVo to do is not make recorded programs available for transfer while that program is still being aired. Once the game is finished, feel free to shoot it over. Of course, that would take hours of bandwidth at current speeds, so it's not really an issue anyway.
I'd rather have companies like TiVo work with the content providers to reach agreements rather than have companies sue each other over supposed 'copyright' violations.
Dish networks PVR is restriction free. It will record anything you want and keep it. It also has the nice 30 second skip on the remote (with out any codes to turn it on). I use my old All-in-Wonder card to permanently record shows from it. The only thing it lacks is the smart recording functions that TIVO has, but then that function sounds like it would be a lot of work to delete things it records that you do not want.
Best thing about it is that it was free 8^)
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Tivo is in big trouble anyway since all the major cable companies are coming out with their own DVR's with a pretty small monthly fee. This alone is probably enough to get rid of them in 5 years or so.
Then they go removing features and pretty much pissing off their loyal customer base, the only people they have to keep them going financially. I imagine cable companies will have the same issues with auto deleting pay per view, and no out of market sporting events, but if they never give you that in the first place it won't be so bad. In addition their hardware is going to work on their systems a lot better than adding on a Tivo to your existing cable system.
Bye bye Tivo.
This is what I've always thought. I can see why Tivo makes it more convenient to record a show, with the menus you can control with your remote, but you could always set up a computer to record shows to your hard disk. Or use the old fashioned VCR. I view Tivo as a convenience item. Kind of like buying bread at the bakery instead of baking your own.
Plus, TiVos are indeed pretty hackable. In contrast to other manufacturers (eg. Microsoft put in a lot of effort to make sure the XBox was "unhackable"), TiVo doesn't really seem to mind people modifying their hardware all that much. And there are a lot of people who have "modded" their TiVos, even if it's just to swap out the harddrive for a bigger one. If you really want to permanently record a show, there's really nothing they can do to stop you. All they can do, is make it harder.
Today, a small part of the English language died.
Audio Home Recording Act of 1992
Section 1008 is interesting:
"Section 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. "
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Based on what I know about the tivo's design, I think this will be an easy thing to get around.
There are only so many ways that tivo can add tags to tell the difference between pay per views and on demand items so that it knows what it should or shouldn't delete. One way is through attributes stored in the MFS structure, another way is maybe a hidden flag somewhere in the MFS filesystem itself, and probably the least likely method would be to tag the tystream itself.
No matter which of these methods they use, it would be very easy to identify and remove any tags. What would work even better is to patch the tivoapp binary so that it doesn't add these tags in the first place, which is otherwise a hard thing to accomplish, but several people in the tivo hacking scene have done quite well at things like this.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
You know, it's funny how this looks like a blow to consumers, when actually it's a blow against other businesses. How much revenue does TiVo and the NFL really think they are going to lose with this technology? This technology, in the consumer space, competes only with those "all games nationwide in a sport" package like DirectTV's NBA League Pass. How many consumers will both a) want to buy that package and b) be technically proficient and financially liquid enough to set up TiVo's around the country to stream all the games to their house? Not too many, entirely too much effort to get around paying ~$200/season.
Where I can see this being used is the sports bar market (for example). You get a bunch of sports bars nationwide which agree to stream each other the games from each market. Now the major cable/dish networks lose the revenue from each of those bars buying a premium sports package. Multiply this by tens of thousands of interested businesses, and it adds up to a significant amount. It seems to me that this is the real issue at hand.
These debates always boil down to those who are willing to pirate and those who aren't, but we can mask it as a "Fair Use" or "Consumer Rights" issue to keep the post count rolling. As far as Tivo goes, I watch a show, I delete it, I don't need to archive it for historical purposes and I have no right to do anything else with it. If it's really great I'll buy it on DVD and if it's like most shows I won't care. I'll bet I am in the majority of Tivo owners on this usage pattern yet people act like this policy somehow infringes on my right to use the device and it's content as described.
I know it's hard for some of you to accept, but not everyone purchases consumer electronics to discover exploits and alternative uses, and most people are willing to accept some limitations for the added convenince that Tivo brings. Most people aren't pirating off ST:DS9 and editing out the commercials for their personal archive or for uploading to usenet. It's hardly a stretch to imagine your downloaded copy of Gigli is time limited and you have no friends, so stop playing that hacked version of Counter Strike Source with the aimbot you just found and watch your damn rental.
TiVo is a victim. They're a victim of doing the right thing. The whole "information wants to be free" thing has gotten insanely out of hand. This is a logical waystation for us to be at, sadly enough, given society today. "If I want it, I should have it, and it doesn't matter that I signed a contract saying something different. Besides, it's not *really* theft, it's just a movie."
[Wish I could offer you a job, but (a) we're not hiring and (b) we're not in Ohio. But integrity and understanding right and wrong are high on my list for qualifying applicants. And getting harder to find.]
I have a Tivo, I quite like my Tivo and deleting PPV movies and NFL doesn't make a spot of difference to me because I don't watch them and I don't care. I suspect that 95% of consumers out there are the same way, so its only 5% of people that are even going to weigh the decision. I don't think PPV is competing heavily against the "watch it many times" market becuase then you'd just buy the DVD or Rent&Rip, hell there are 1$ DVD rentals everywhere... PPV is way overpriced IMHO anyway.
For those who are like me and don't want to deal with the configuration of Myth on linux with all of its dependency goodness, have a go at Beyond TV. It worked for me and I like it a lot. The new version (3.5) will do multiple tuners too.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
neutered Aibos?
In my TiVo experience, it's just been useful for delaying my viewing for my convenience, not for archiving things. That's what DVD is for.
Some kind soul pretty regularly posts The Daily Show in alt.binaries.multimedia every week.
I've lived in Europe for two years and have seen nearly all of them within days of them airing in the US.
Thank you Mr. Poster!!! Please keep them coming.
Oh am I going to cry when they finally shut USENET down.
Was the sensational headline really necessary? It's 'pay per view'... it only makes sense.
Why? Were you planning on building a huge library of PPV movies and blacked out NFL games?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The PPV one is a little more disconcerting. Don't really like the idea. Not that I ever get PPV movies, but I don't like auto-deletion like that.
But let's be real: does anyone think TiVo WANTS to do any of this?? This is TiVo making small concessions to help hold back the onslaught.
I made a PVR system about 3 years ago and haven't regretted it since. Mine isn't as complex or capable as MythTV (primarily because MythTV doesn't support my ATI 8500DV), nor is it as simple as a Tivo, but it can fit a 2 hr. movie onto DVD at full DVD resolution with no problems.
And since I'm using ATI's latest & greatest software, I'm able to record natively at this resolution in DVD-ready mpeg2 format.
Other solutions, such as ShowShifter, offer a prettier front end, but they're unable to take advantage of ATI's built in codecs, so mpeg recording is a 2 part process, in that you record in full DV, and then re-compress the video to mpeg, or whatever I want.
It's nice to know that while I'm archiving my girlfriends HBO series, that I don't need to worry about the manufacturer of my equipment suddenly changing what my equipment will, or will not do.
Thanks again Tivo! It's moves like this that really make me think I made the right choice by building instead of purchasing your product.
I own a TiVo and don't ever order PPV, so this does not affect me, is a non-issue, and does not make my TiVo Series1 less useful to me. Is there honestly that much stuff on PPV that you want to record and watch again that you will base your PVR buying decision on it? Honestly, are you going to watch that 90 second boxing match from 5 years ago that you paid $50 for?
I would instead think about getting a TiVo with DVD writer built in so that I could burn it to disc and watch it anywhere outside of TiVo's influence and then they can delete it all they want.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Tivo should be looking to expand their functionality at this point in time. With companies such Dish network and comcast rolling out their own pvr services, Tivo needs to do more to make a cost justification for the service. Sorry, downloadable movies and dvd burning aren't going to bring the masses or keep your existing customers. Reducing what they can record will drive people away in droves. Unless, Tivo makes a major paradigm shift towards increase the function of the device instead of increasing revenue through partners by sacrificing user freedom.
Parent is right about this one. Tivo's real fear should be all of the cable/satellite PVRs that are on the market. The true tivo "fans" will quickly turn when unremovable restrictions are enforced. Let's face it, the guy who's hacking a tivo could just as easily build a mythtv box or a windows equivalent.
This whole issue illustrates a point I've been pointing out on /. for quite some time: It is impossible for movie/music companies to stifle the free flow of information. So tivo's going to be controlled now, oh well, time for any capable geek to move on to another technology which circumvents these measures. More importantly, time for the inept masses to look to the geek for their solutions as well.
Something that the majority of people don't understand, even our president doesn't understand, that, is that you cannot rule a mass of intelligent motivated people with mandate. Look at the comparisons, prohibition, the war on drugs, the "war" on music "piracy", all failing, and rather miserably. Why? Because the motivation of the people and the means to accomplish these goals is far superior to that of the government trying to prevent them.
So sure, let tivo slit their own throats an inch at a time, I'll still watch my ripped movies and I'm sure NFL fans will find a workaround as well.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
besides the pvr350 part of your setup (which has it's own quirks), did you consider checking out knoppmyth to potentially cut down on the build/install time?
*shrug* FWIW there are other "off the shelf" commercial (and free) 3rd party PVR/htpc software solutions out there... although they are on the *gasp* windows platform *ducks*... I liked SageTV... BeyondTV has been getting good reviews... and GBPVR is very full featured, FREE as in beer (not source), and is pretty cool overall. There's a lesser known HTPC solution that's open source for windoze Media Portal... I've got a growing list of PVR/HTPC links here
Also there are other linux based OSS pvr solutions besides myth/knoppmyth... like freevo, dave and dina multimedia project, and a few others I can't recall...
*shrug*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
This is exactly why I think replaytv was so much better a product.
Not only did it have great features like commerical skip (until the we practically sued to death and tivo grabbed share). But with lots of extensibility like the great oss dvarchive where you create watch, archive and control your networked replaytv boxes, I always think it is a shame that tivo with the cuter name and better marketing campaign which caught so much of the market share.
I strongly suggest people think about checking out the competition, all the hacker types I know prefer it. But now that tivo has the market, they really don't care what consumers want as long as they sell more units. Tivo has become synonymous with pvr; and utimately we the consumers are really loosing out.
All ye all ye outs in free!
Only people who do not own TiVo would say this. It is exactly the smart recording features (such as searching for keywords in description, recording all new showings of a program, record all appearances of an actor, or director, or writer...) that are so valuable. TiVo is definitely NOT just a digital VCR! And those who have ever used a VCR to time shift can attest that it is a pain. Anyway, just a note that only the ignorant would claim the features are not of value. As far as deleting the auto-recorded programs, they get deleted automatically if you run out of space (easily upgraded) and request a show to record. These shows stay happily out of your way until you are bored and want to see if there is anything good on. This just increases your chances that the answer will be yes.
Relax, Have a homebrew Manuals are for systmes that are either very complex or broken
To reduce functionality after you've bought a unit sounds like fraud. Bait & switch. Like buying a fast sports car, and then having them download a patch into your engine computer that speed limits it to 85MPH so that the car company won't be sued for selling fast cars. I'd be looking for a class action lawyer to sue the pants off of TiVo if my box suddenly stopped doing something it used to do -- regardless of any license agreement that may have come with it.
And it's such a great way to advertise to new customers. Buy the new TiVo. It does less than the old model!
Now my question is: will this apply to my Dish Network PVR?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
and call her MythGF, cuz you certainly don't have the real thing.
"MythGF" is probably closer to truth than you think. Spending so much time trying to make MythTV do anything resembling usablity, "RealGF" is getting cranky.
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
DVB-T is DVB for TERRESTRIAL. It's Europe's equivalent of ATSC digital broadcasting in the US.
DVB-C is for cable, and is Europe-only. US cable uses QAM modulation also, but the coding scheme and other minor details about the signal differ, so DVB-C cards do not work with U.S. cable.
There ARE QAM-capable tuner cards for US cable on the market now, but since almost all U.S. cable channels are encrypted, they're not very useful.
PC-based DVB-S receivers won't work in the U.S. except for getting Dish Network's preview channel, as Dish's encryption scheme is modified enough from standard Nagravision that the Nagra access cards compatible with PC-based DVB-S receivers won't work with Dish.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Actually, this sounds quite reasonable. Why would you want to keep PPV/VOD programs stuffing up your TIVO/PVR? A reasonable finite time for PPV should be tolerated as long as a more permanent digital media recording (ie DVD) is made available within the timeline. As for VOD, I don't know why you would/should want to record it anyhow - it's 'on demand' - just order it again should you want to see it.
I don't see how this is any real threat to 'fair use'. You can still record the programs, but you have a limited timeline to watch. If you can't watch within that timeline, maybe you didn't really want to watch.
The NFL press release seems to boil down to this sentence.
After detailed discussions with TiVo, the NFL now concurs that TiVo's current technology will not allow real-time transmissions that would be a cause of concern for the NFL.
Or in other words, nothing will change in this regard.
The PPV timeout thing is a real difference, but PPV is not part of the general Tivo service anyway. Don't buy them if you don't like the conditions.
Okay, why hasn't anyone created their own Linux for the Tivo hardware platform? For some reason, hacking the Tivo is taboo just because the thing runs linux. Oh it runs linux, and they "let us" "hack" it putting in bigger drives. CLUEBAT SAYS, YOU OWN IT. They can't stop you from upgrading it. CLUEBAT SAYS, if you were to replace the program guide system with something based off of XMLTV or some other open source project, they can't cry foul.
People laugh about the Xbox, Linux, and Microsoft loosing money since the thing is supposidly sold as a loss leader. But Tivo, Nooo can't touch that.
I called Tivo to inquire about how to add one of those "Press thumbs up to record" to a commercial. They wouldn't talk, they referred me to buy a $30,000 system that inserts the "push thumbs up to record" into the program signal. A EEG Line 21 encoder/decoder in raw mode and a commercial on VHS later I figured out how it was stored but haven't continued to research. They weren't nice, they weren't overflowing with joy. MY opinion is they took Replay's business, kind of like a Microsoft if you will.
So how does the Tivo work? Is there a software framebuffer rendering the menus to MPEG2 then pushing it to the decoder hardware? My roomate got a new Tivo and upgraded for someone, and I got the chance to peek inside. The new Tivos are using Broadcom KFIR-II chips for MPEG2 encoding (and probably decoding?). These chips are already usable under linux via the Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe USB unit. They use the exact same MPEG2 chipset, I put one of my PCTV boards next to the tivo, and the chips are identical in revision, size and everything else.
It is my guess that people could make an open source OS replacement for the Tivo hardware platform that would introduce all of the features that Tivo is taking away. Hell, might even be able to make it run on a BSD varient, NetBSD powered Tivo... bring it ON!
I'm really curious how the Tivo renders the menus... outside of this, I can't think of any really difficult obstacles, unless the architecture is very very proprietary (MIPS core on the new boxes, PPC on the old..).
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
If these two systems were easy to install (as easy as installing a Linux firewall distro) then maybe a TiVo or Windows media centre wouldn't seem to attractive.
Has taken me a good week and a half just to get a DVB card functioning in Linux. Had to play with bios settings like PCI delays to get the card to function. When it works 100% it will be great, but it's not friendly enough for most people yet (it's been ruining my sleep and i'm relatively good with Linux).
I have a way around all of this. Here's what I do.
Get about 10 VHS tapes and 2 VCRs. Set the VCRs to record all of your shows. Then, when your VCRs are done recording, take the tapes out and put sticky tabs on them noting what shows are recorded on each tape. Then put the tapes in a big stack and put two new tapes in the VCRs.
Using this method I've only lost about a dozen shows due to lazyness in sticky tab notation and misplacement of tapes (and occasionally the baby will rearrange them for me).
Anyway, who needs a TIVO when you can follow these simple steps and keep your shows until the sticky tab falls off.
Amen! Big Ta Do over nothing in my book too. I don't copy payper view stuff anyway. Craps too expensive to begin with. I just want to be able to watch Big Brother, or such at a time most convienient to me. That's how I use my Tivo and love it because of that. I can watch the 6 O'clock news when I want now. I can pause it so I can argue the point being made with the poor sap sitting next to me, (sorry wife), and not miss what is being said next. That's what Tivo is about and anyone who has one knows it.
This is a nothing story by someone who doesn't have a Tivo, is envious of it and wants to make it seem less valuable to others. Bunch of Phewy!
I've had one for a couple years now. It works as well as the Tivo does, without all of the BS that that they seem to have been pulling recently. And SonicBlue has actually put up money to fight this type of crap in court.
The killer app for me is that I can fire up DVArchive on my Mac/Windows/Linux box and copy over a program from the ReplayTV with ease. No need to hack hardware or software like I believe you have to with the Tivo.
About the only feature I would like is the media center. but then, I don't believe I can use it from my Linux server anyways, and that's where all the MP3s are.
About the only thing I can think of that has done to the ReplayTV that is even remotely similar to this is removal/crippling of the auto-skip feature. But that doesn't work much of the time anyways.
Are you talking about zap2it? They still let you sign up for free. If they ever stop, people in the US will go back to using screen scrapers like people in other countries. Where's the problem?
:)
Screen Scrapers are counter to revenue models so at a certain level you can expect an arms race.
If Zap2It offered a reliable data feed for $3/mo, how could you argue with that? A good service costs money to operate. Heck, I pay $7/mo to listen to a radio show online, but that's alot more bandwidth.
If you figure a 5-person shop could offer a data feed with operating costs of about $350,000 per year you'd need twenty thousand subscribers to make a meager profit. Probably do-able.
If I were Zap2It I'd probably offer the $3/mo feed or a free feed that could be decrypted by authorized players which would agree to show ads.
Someone smarter can work out the crypto on how to do that when you have the source.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What features will the remove in the future? Very simply I do not trust them and I will not give money to companies I do not trust unless I have to.
I consider it a coincidence, not ironic, that a more elite person replies to correct a parent poster in order to tell them that they are using the word "ironic" incorrectly.
Responding to a coincidence that responds to a post using the word "ironic" is ironic, and responding to an ironic response to a coincidence that is a response to a post using the word "ironic" is, in itself, idiotic.
Therefore I am an idiot for replying to you.
Self-awareness of idiocy therefore makes me not an idiot and the only conclusion can be that none of my parent posters exist.
Take a look at the demographic you yourself mention. Authors, poets, artists and musicians. All areas which dont take an inordinant amount of resources or personal time to produce something. And all areas which have had mixed success in breaking into the mainstream, but very few have had the same amount of success as professionals have. I did say that you would still find the people doing it for the love, but seriously, how many people have the thousands of dollars available per day for a multicamera, broadcast quality video and audio recording system? How many have the money to take it to locations? How many people have the money to carry out huge stunts? How many people have the money for CGI? The answer really is very very very few, and the number of people willing to make that sort of investment based on a love of the thing? Minimal. People dont want to stump up $10,000 or more for love, with little to no return. You said it yourself, people would do this in their spare time, but the sheer number of people producing would dive dramatically. Musicians dont have the time to put out 2 professional albums a year when theres no return.
MythTv
PVR Hardware Database
RedHat install guide
Gentoo Install Guide(I went this route)
Knoppix Myth
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Let me clarify. And I hope I'm wrong but.... ...isn't access to the vast majority of popular binary groups carrying material of provable illegality provided by relatively few "newgroup companies"? They behave as 'central servers'. USENET is distributed yes, but access to the binaries seems fairly concentrated.
They just seem like an easy target and I'm sure it would be easy to prove that 99% of their traffic is stolen IP. There are free speech issues involved, of course, but but I'll media companies will work their way around them.
I don't think USENET will really be completely shut down but I do think that things will inevitably occur to make the mass trading of IP via nntp difficult and impractical.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
You know Tivo, Inc., when I bought my Tivo, it was for time-shifting the television shows I really wanted to watch, to pause live television, rewind it, and to save shows for as long as I wanted to keep them (The Daily Show, for example). Now, to offer me a new feature, which I didn't purchase the device for, in favor of letting Macrovision and its closely tied entertainment executives tamper with the features I actually did buy it for, is wrong of you.
Sure your Tivo Desktop is cool. Sure I would like to download Tivo recorded content to my PC or laptop. The problem is that's not what I bought a Tivo for and now you are starting to cripple the features that sold me on your product to begin with.
I would prefer you keep my Series 2 Tivo restriction free. Let me record whatever I want and keep it, don't delete it based on some other companies idea of how long I should have it.
Then you could create a separate product that does the Tivo Desktop for those that want it and find the content restrictions livable.
I am afraid, Tivo, Inc., you are going to regret this move you have made, because now hundreds or thousands of other content owners are going to rain down on you like hell fire to get you to add restrictions to their productions as well.
*TheDarb
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