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.

Comments

Irony

[Prophetic_Truth]

it's only fitting that when I clicked this article it read "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

Hmmm...

[TheSpoom]

And I'll continue to not own a TiVo and download the shows I want to watch. Damn that internet! ;^)

Glad I have myth

[FictionPimp]

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.

Re:Glad I have myth

[ERJ]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that you would be limited to non-encrypted signals with dvb capable cards. That would pretty much leave you with local channels...

Re:Glad I have myth

[enrico_suave]

You won't necessarly have a problem when you switch to digital cable... you'd do the same thing a TiVo user does... You'd use an IR blaster (or a serial cable if you have a motrolla 2k dig cable box that hasn't been crippled by your cable company)

The IR blaster will be controlled by your mythbox... the ir blaster will simulate your digital cable boxes remote control presses to change teh channel at the appropriate times to record the shows you want... you just pipe the output via svideo or composite into your capture/tuner card =)

e.

Re:Glad I have myth

[Darth Maul]

Amen. MythTV is a great solution for anyone considering a PVR solution. A few points to consider:

1) Back- and front-end architecture. I have one backend that records, and two front-end lightweight machines that can view content.

2) Free (not counting computer hardware costs, however).

3) Can use external channel changer like TiVo (I have a satellite box, so I need an IR transmitter to change channels on it).

4) More than just TV! I have my entire music collection on there, along with DVDs, games, weather, images...

5) Need more recording space? Just stick in another hard drive (I know you can do this with TiVO, but your warranty is then void). I currently can record up to 160 hours on my box.

6) Different themes available.

7) Auto commercial detection.

8) Can edit and cut out parts of a video recording so you can burn to DVD without commercials, etc.

The list goes on... I've used it for well over a year and just love it. The WAF is also quite high (skipping commercials is huge).

Re:Glad I have myth

[andrew_j_w]

...such as this one . /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 outputs the raw 18Mb/s stream contain all the TV channels (on that band) which can then be split into the raw MPEG2 using the dvbstream program.

Should read

[Phixxr]

Should read "Tivo plans to shrink customer base".

-phixxr

Re:Should read

[retto]

Riiiight.... I'm sure the bulk of Tivo's base is really concerned about live-streaming NFL games to another site. I fail to see how NOT adding that functionality to a new product is going to cause lots of current subscribers to drop their current Tivo service. Tivo markets their product as a way to record shows when you aren't around, and I'm pretty sure their current customers think that is the most important benefit to owning a Tivo.

Re:Should read

[gad_zuki!]

Oh please. The fact the big media hasn't destroyed the tivo company is something of a miracle. All tivo is doing is obeying corrupt american IP laws. Fight this at the grassroots, then in DC. Complaining to tivo for the laws of your republic is counter productive.

TiVo Shoots Self in Foot

[Trikenstein]

I can see how they would do this to reduce their legal costs, but it has to be costing them subscribers.

TiVo: Less useful everyday

[d_jedi]

(ie: parody of MSN's "More useful everyday" slogan, for the mods :-> )

PPV

[SuiteSisterMary]

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.

Re:PPV

[0123456]

Of course, as usual, you completely ignore the difference between renting a DVD and not returning it -- i.e. depriving the owner of their property -- and copying a PPV movie and keeping it, which only deprives the distributor of potential future income that you were probably never going to give them anyway.

So quite why your post is rated 'Insightful' is beyond me.

Re:PPV

[GoofyBoy]

>it doesn't mean you actually have to give me your house for a move unless you're really really stupid and don't know all your rights.

Huh?

Party 1: Give me legal ownership of your house or equivlent money and I will let you watch/own this movie.
Party 2: Agreed.

Ok, the Party 2 might be dumb or smart depending on the worth of his house or if he gains rights to something he believes is worth the house.
But how does Party 2 knowing all his rights makes the agreement invalid?

Re:PPV

[Dun Malg]

They're clearly just doing this to be assholes and try to further put control on what people can record and keep even though the material in question, along with their profits, is completely irrelevant.

Or, more likely, they're doing it to stave off possible legal challenges from the purveyors of PPV movies and NFL football. Said purveyors may have already made an issue of it behind the scenes.

Re:PPV

[Waffle Iron]

With Pay Per View, you are QUITE SPECIFICALLY buying a license to watch a movie once. You are PAYing PER VIEW.

That may be what the provider intends, but unless there is law backing that up, I am entitled record it and view it later as I please.

Standard copyright case law allows me to timeshift, and I didn't sign any contract with the cable company that said I specifically couldn't record a PPV show.

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.

As I just pointed out, you're just plain wrong. I don't need a license as an end user because standard copyright law allows me to timeshift the show without one. There is no license. I payed to have the movie play on my box, and I'm entitled to save it for later viewing.

Re:PPV

[pyrrhonist]

copying a PPV movie and keeping it, which only deprives the distributor of potential future income that you were probably never going to give them anyway.

If you aren't going to watch it again, then why do you need to keep it?

Re:PPV

[Richard_at_work]

How about renting it, copying it and then returning it. You are keeping a permanent copy for a rental price, if you want a permanent copy why not purchase a permenent copy in the first place? Oh thats right, because the arguement 'I wouldnt have bought it anyway, so it isnt hurting anyone' comes into play as it normally does on slashdot. If you werent going to buy it anyway, what entitles you to a free copy? I think $19.99 is a very good price for what I get on a DVD.

Re:PPV

[Richard_at_work]

Because it's a perfectly good and valid argument: if someone looks at my house, considers buying it, but then decides to build a copy instead, I have no right to demand they pay me money.

No, it isnt a perfectly good and valid arguement, and that analogy is just plain laughable.

The simple fact is that 'intellectual property' is an attempt to artificially create scarcity in an environment where there is none: at best it's a moronic abuse of government power, at worst it will prevent a truly information-based economy from arising. It's nothing more than the modern equivalent of buggy-whip manufacturers conspiring with the government to keep those new-fangled automobiles off the road.

If there wasnt an artificial scarcity on hard to produce, easy to copy items then really how many films would we be enjoying now? How many authors would be producing best sellers? How many musicians would be producing works? How many computer/console games would be being released? I will tell you now, not many at all. When it comes down to it, the majority of items produced for this 'artificial scarcity' are produced for money, not love, and without the artificial scarcity we would have rather less entertainment.

Like it or not, Hollywood is a huge industry which employs a massive amount of people. Those people arent doing it for love, they are doing it to eat. Would they be there if their wages were on a charity basis? Hell no. They are there for the same reason you are at work, money. There may be a very few at the top end that are doing it for love.

If we had to rely on amateur works to fill the void this industry would leave behind, then the world would be a dull place. Sure, youd get some gems (like Linux) but then you would get tonnes and tonnes of drivel (majority of sourceforge). Tell me when the last popular free book written in modern times came. Tell me when the last popular free 3d FPS was released. Tell me when the last amateur film made it big, got shown in cinemas world wide. You cant. For the most part, a lot of people dont have the resources to produce Doom3 or Titanic in their spare time (for that is what they will be doing, they have to earn money to eat as well).

Next time you claim the artificial scarcity is an abuse of power, just think of the diversity and entertainment value that that scarcity has produced. Unless theres money involved, chances are it wouldnt happen otherwise as people dont have the resources. Software is an exception, because resources required are small for entry into this field.

Re:PPV

[Control Group]

This is an intuitively appealing, but false, argument. The fact of the matter is that people are willing to pay for content, whether or not copyright law exists. Your argument is the same one made against VCRs: if people can tape movies, why will they ever buy them? It's the argument that was made against player pianos (who'll buy sheet music?) and against TV (who will go to the movies?).

Each of those occurrences similarly highlighted the same thing: people are willing to pay for content, particularly if it is made convenient and useful to them.

Similarly, plenty of music, art and literature was created prior to the institionalization of modern copyright. Modern technology lowers the barriers to entry into the content-creation world; even without imposing artificial scarcity, if content was created absent such protection while it was harder to make, by what rationale is it predicted that less will be made when it's easier to make, even without that protection?

Re:PPV

[Kjella]

Timeshifting was approved because shows would air at a fixed date. The non-infringing use they based their decision on was to view the show only once, but at a different time. They did not, despite it being a result, give you a right to create a permanent copy that you could view many times (albeit watching it once over several sessions, or starting over due to interruption would go under fair use).

Since then, there are a number of factors that have improved to ours, the consumers, advantage. No quality loss (digital copies), easy commercial skips but the base non-infringing use has been the same - time-shifting.

If you take away the time-shifting argument by making content available at any time (on-demand) or close to (say, every hour), that argument is withering. You may argue that you want the movie to start at exactly 19.43, but it would be a much weaker argument.

Should the specific case of a tool only capable of time-shifting PPV content ever reach the Supreme court, don't be too surprised if the verdict is against you. As for a common TiVo box, the non-infringing use would be all the standard fixed broadcasts, the PPV use merely collateral.

That being said, there is a much more important case being brought before the Supreme court now, that of P2P applications and their liability for copyright infringement. It is far more fundamental than the Betamax case, because it will shape the future of all digital devices and software, as a sequence of 0s and 1s can be copyrighted. Digital PVRs would be just one small subset of devices whose fate depend on that outcome.

Kjella

Build your own...

[Standmic]

http://www.byopvr.com/

Re:Build your own...

[Lumpy]

you know I hear this mantra every time we have a Tivo article..... and it's not realistic...

I went down that road, I built a mythbox and a freevo. I fought with them monthly. Then the service provider in the US dries up and forces you to register with them every 3 months with looming promises of having to pay for the right to access it.

I gave up, sold all the equipment and bought a refurbed ReplayTV for $100.00 and have not looked back cince. I can easily get shows off the replay to a computer for burning to DVD or simply having a media server with lots of content. It always works and is worth the $12.95 a month to keep me from fighting with another change in XMLTV packages or other failure,change or waiting for the listing provider to change their mind again.

for 99% of the people out there making your own PVR is not an option. hell for most techno-geeks
it still is not an option.

Too Many KneeJerk Responses

[FortKnox]

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?

Re:Too Many KneeJerk Responses

[gcaseye6677]

I will never understand why some team owners think that blacking out home games is a good idea. If you can't watch your hometown team play on TV, are you going to all of a sudden decide to blow several hundred dollars to go to the stadium to see the game? I suppose some people are this braindead, but I would think most would say "screw the !" This strategy makes as much sense as the MPAA attempts to ban the VCR. Overall team profits should increase with more exposure as fans tend to buy team merchandise, go to games, watch games on TV which leads to advertising revenue, etc. Hint to team owners, if nobody goes to your games it's probably because your team sucks and the tickets are overpriced.

Re:Too Many KneeJerk Responses

[rhombic]

We're doing the experiment in San Diego, and so far it looks like the blackout is hurting ticket sales.

For the past decade or so, blackouts were prevented by the city purchasing all the unsold tickets-- every home game was a sell out, courtesy of the taxpayers. This year, the clause was killed and so non-sold out home games (which is every home game) is blacked out. By the NFL's logic, therefore, you'd expect higher attendance at the game, right?

So far, with three home games this season, average attendance is DOWN 14% ! It looks like even the perennial biggest seller of the year, the Raiders game this weekend, won't sell out and so will be blacked out. The net result of the blackout? NOBODY CARES. The chargers are having a pretty decent season (4-3 so far, usually we're 1-6 at this point) and NOBODY CARES. When you take the games off the TV, the audience doesn't take it upon themselves to spend $100 each to go to the game, they just find something else to do Sunday. Lost ticket revenue, lost TV revenue, lost fans. Idiots.

probably due to new tivos with dvd-r

[acomj]

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

Macrovision

[St. Arbirix]

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.

Just Series2 or Series1 also?

[Boone^]

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.

Re:Stupid.

[bastion_xx]

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.

Not a big deal

[WebGangsta]

So TiVo and the NFL reached an agreement regarding TiVo's planned ability to send fully recorded programs across the country so that the NFL maintains their localized blackouts. How can anyone have a problem with this? It's the same thing that the NFL did with DirecTV when the NFL Sunday Ticket was created.

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.

Re:Glad I have Dish PVR

[computechnica]

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^)

accelerating their own death

[steelerguy]

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.

Re:accelerating their own death

[jgordon7]

As a recent owner of one of those Cable DVRs and being a previous tivo owner.

I hope that is not the case. Since my experience with the cable service DVR is extremely poor. Even though the Cable one can record HD channels and has Dual Tuners, its user interface is down right awful to the point of being almost unuseable. It is slow to react, trying to FF through commericals is almost more painful than watching the commercials. Its conflict management is just plain dumb. If one episode of a show you have as a favorite conflicts with a movie you want to watch you tell it to record the movie and not the favorite show, well it stops recording ALL future shows of that favorite TOO.

If you start watching a recorded show that is not done recording it starts you at LIVE time, not the beginning of the show. If you rewind to the beginning which is what you have to do, and the show finishes recording before you finish watching the show it JUMPS you forward to LIVE TV. And it does not remember where you were in the show when you go back to watch it.

Trying to find something to record is damn near impossible. The only search ability is by Title FIRST LETTER, so for say Simpson you have to weed through all of the shows that begin with "S". It has Genre search but is equally useless.

And for recorded duplicate shows, even if you tell only get first runs, it records every airing of a show. This also make the poor conflict management even worse since it wants to records shows that have repeat showings in a week too.

I will be dropping this POS, as soon as I get my money together to build a HTPC.

Its only saving grace is price. However that is big for alot of people and means we will soon see more crappy PVRs in the future.

Not a big deal

[igrp]

I don't this this is such a big deal. As I understand it - and I might be wrong on this - these limitations only apply to new features (ie. remote access to recorded TV programming). So, I suppose this is basically a CYA maneuver to limit TiVo's liability and to stop costly litigation in its tracks.

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.

This shouldn't be difficult to get around.

[AlphaWolf_HK]

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.

Business vs. Business

[prisonercx]

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.

Well, I've owned a Tivo for

[bob670]

about 3.5 years now, I surely couldn't live without it at this point. But I guess the question I have is, who does this really effect? I don't think the average Tivo owner really cares as long as they get what they pay for. And in most cases you are "Paying Per View" for one view of that movie in a certain window, so as long as it's clear you have to watch it by a certain date, what is the issue? Same thing with the NFL, they share revenue based on a fairly complex formula, something like Tivo could really screw that up.

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.

Re:Well, I've owned a Tivo for

[Knight2K]

I think the issue really is, in the analog world, I could tape every episode of a TV series that I wanted and keep them as long as the tape lasted. I also could record every football game I was interested in and watch them when I wanted. Some games, like the Patriot's snow bowl, I might want to watch several times or edit together with all the moments of their Super Bowl year. With the advent of CD burners and VCDs I could even convert them to digital format and save some shelf space.

I know the argument about digital: every copy made is a perfect copy, indistinguisable from the original. In the analog world, I could just keep making copies of my original tape recording and only suffer 1 generational fall-off.

I'm not interested in taping movies off of PPV and then charging other people to show them. But I would like to be able to tape Game 4 of the World Series and send it to my grandmother. I might want to show friends a tape of the playoff game I went to where it was 20 below zero. Is the NFL really hurt by that?

The old joke is that nobody can figure out how to set the clock on their VCRs. Yet we still can record using VCRs even though some people don't use that functionality.

Want to stop piracy, MPAA, et. al.? Bust people who use mass duplicators and sell bootleg DVD's and CD's on street corners. Or look to your own people. How many people do you figure get to see a movie before its official release?

People who taped movies off of TV still bought commercial tapes and DVD's. The quality was usually better because the transfers were made off of the master copies and the tapes could be sized to accomodate a full standard play version and no more. DVD's can optimize bitrates and provide additional discs. The content producers can also provide extras that you might not get in an OTA broadcast.

Consumers are limited by compression used in broadcast, compression used by the Tivo to store files, and the expense involved to buy enough media or have enough storage to store content in at a desired quality level. Those prices may drop, but video files haven't been getting much smaller, especially with HD-quality video. Consumer writable DVD's and CD's use ink that degrades, as opposed to pressed plastic.

Also consider that the piracy loss numbers that the various associations throw out are frequently exposed as over-blown. Frequently, piracy numbers are followed by a report of record profits. I don't think my making a mix CD for a road trip or ripping DVD's to a portable video player is hurting the content producers all that much.

Accepting degraded functionality only makes it okay for the content distributors to take more capabilities away from you that you used to have. How long until you have to buy the right to Tivo an individual series? Or each episode in a series? Or not be able to timeshift a series at all? And all because you can now get cool sounds out of 6 speakers and can see every pore in Uma Thurman's skin.

Victimhood

[Roadkills-R-Us]

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.]

Re:Victimhood

[adoarns]

The whole "information wants to be free" thing has gotten insanely out of hand.

Will someone mod this motherfucker up? PLEASE?

No other person in this thread has correctly identified that

• Right And Wrong are explicitly dependent on legislative status quo,
• where potentially monetizable assets are a priori non-exclusive, the erection of artificial barriers to their easy dissemination is not only desirable but a religio-commercio-moral obligation;
• that theft ipso facto is not simply deprivation of some entity's property, but a moral failing of untouchable classes to respect the limits to all kinds of access reasonably and righteously imposed, and finally
• that since the sky is obviously falling, politically, culturally, and intellectually in this country, you better start wearing a fucking hardhat.

And oh man! in so few words! What a guy, this. A true skewerer. "This whole 'Information wants to be free' thing has gotten out of hand" in one fell swoop condemning pile upon pile of hippie thought to obvious absurdity, and then reproving us, the degenerates, for our foolishness.

a counterpoint to the Tivo will die threads

[seibed]

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.

So next we'll see

[unsinged int]

neutered Aibos?

Glad I built instead of bought

[Mr. Cancelled]

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.

so...

[shokk]

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.

accelerating their own death

[xThinkx]

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.

I Would/Will be Furious - Bait & Switch!

[Nom du Keyboard]

Buy a TiVo lately? Sometime in the next few months, your machine will quietly download a patch that makes it respond to a new copy protection scheme from software maker Macrovision.

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?

Nope

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Re:Not much to see

[rhombic]

"TV contracts are lucrative, but ticket sales are the lifeblood."

Maybe so, but does blacking out the TV actually increase ticket sales? Our city is doing the experiment, and as far as I can tell (they're not releasing numbers as far as I've heard) bringing the blackout back doesn't seem to be upping attendance.

I live in San Diego, where we didn't have black-outs the last few seasons, courtesy of an a$$-raping contract between the Chargers and our crooked-as-a-twisty-straw city council that guarenteed them the revenue of a sell-out for every game-- the city would pay them full ticket price for every unsold seat. After much wrangling and public outcry, that clause has been terminated, and every non-sellout home game (which is every game excapt the Raiders) is now blacked out.

Know what? I don't know a single person who's gone to more games because of it. My group of friends averaged one or two games a year, and we're going to one this year. They lost the TV revenue, and it doesn't look like they're upping seat sales-- the blackout just makes people not care as much. I used to watch pretty much every home game, and the Chargers got the TV revenue from it. This year, I don't even know what their record is, haven't made the effort to watch the away games in a while, just don't care anymore. That is not good marketing.

Who needs a TIVO anyway?

[Capt_Troy]

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.

Re:Irony - parent is obligatory post

[LordOfYourPants]

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.

Re:That seals the deal for me.....

[cayenne8]

"I've been looking into purchasing a Tivo for about a month now, but I definitely won't bother now. Anyone got any URL's so I could see how to build one using Linux?"

MythTv

PVR Hardware Database

RedHat install guide

Gentoo Install Guide(I went this route)

Knoppix Myth

Re:Irony - parent is obligatory post

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.