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

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).

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

[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

[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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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