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TiVo Starts Testing "Pop-up" Ads
mkraft writes "ZDNet is reporting that TiVo has started a testing a new pop-up style ad on a random and limited number of subscriber's TiVo as of this weekend. The ads are designed to be displayed on screen when the user fast forwards through specially tagged commercials. Clicking the thumbsup or select button on the TiVo remote will take the user to a menu containing more information about the advertisement (text and/or video).
Unfortunately according to reports on the TiVo Community forums the ads are also showing up during actual programs as well."
Nothing like watching a great show and having to minimize the link for the latest viagra pill with your kids.
And to think, TiVo use to be a quality DVR...
I guess the pressure about the ability to skip ads and their lack of revenue convinced them to take this approach.
One would think that with the recent signing with Comcast that TiVo wouldn't have the need to pull something like this.
Given my choice in the future I do believe I shall stick with something more like MythTV
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
FTA: "Our goal is in no way to interfere with the TiVo experience," TiVo spokesman David Shane said.
TiVo has gone from a cool company with financial problems to another advertising laden CrapCo that's cutting it's own throat. Even more reason to cancel cable entirely, buy a divx/xvid ready dvd player (well under CA$100) and download what really interests you without ads. Don't worry, the big studios won't starve. They're making buckets on product placement within the shows now.
Trolling is a art,
... to build your own pvr (plug for www.gbpvr.com , great piece of software)
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
This popped up on my TiVo while watching "Good Eats." I'm sitting there, find out how to use water to slow down and control the tempature of custard when all of a sudden I get a popup for feminine product.
Really, what does that have anything to do with an egg based custard? I mean, you can add fruit and other neat things to the bottom of the custard for some variations, but feminine products had no business anywhere around there. Almost lost my appe[tt]ite!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
problem solved.
During Christmas I was 30 second skipping commercials and it gave a pop up and said to enter the 20 digit number on the Replay web page to be entered for a drawing of some cash (cant remember exactly). I did it - foolishly. I think it was a marketing study to evaluate the rate of capturing attention so commercials could be inserted for revenue.
I have seen the Tivo commercial "thumbs up" but it is really non intrusive and you have only a half second to press the button the get the ad. It is just a matter of time until the commercials are back in your face though. Since I use both Tivo and Replay for comparisons. I am fortunate to pay per month instead of forking of the case for a lifetime subscription. I bet the people that have lifetime memberships will have more popups in the future. My rate of revenue/return via popup ads will approach zero if the become too intrusive.
Let me get this straight: I pay for the TiVo device itself, then I pay a monthly service fee. Now I also have to put up with highly invasive advertising?
This might be acceptable if there was no monthly fee for using the device, but this is akin to adding commercials to HBO. Either choose to be subscription-supported or advertising-supported, but not both.
Tivo's main selling points are timeshifting and commercial skip. What are they thinking?
For years now, during certain commercials, a little icon would pop up during certain ads that did exactly the same thing. The only difference is it takes up a quarter of the screen now, appearantly.
I have been using Comcast's DVR (Non-Tivo) for about 2 months. I am wondering with this change why anyone would want the Tivo device? I beleive I can do anything with the DVR that Tivo can do except - 30 sec skip, and Tivo learning my preferences.
Tivo used to be cool. Record shows when you can't see them and watch them later -- and you can skip over the commercials. A build-you-own PVR is simple.
People are getting satellite radio partly or mostly because they don't play commercials. How long before they change that policy?
Seriously, I thought Tivo sounded cool when it first came out, but as time goes on, and they "improve" it more and more to make it harder to use, the desire to get one has diminished.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I actually saw one of these last night...a semi-transparent graphic that was displayed when I fast-forwarded through the commercials on "24". It wasn't as annoying as I thought it would be, but at the same time I don't remember what movie they were promoting.
Someday a Slashdot ID of 177180 will mean something.
Although I don't have cable because I don't watch much television to begin with, given this new load of crapvertisements shoved down viewers' throats, I will never buy or use a Tivo. Okay, I'm only one person, but I'm sure there are many more people who think this.
But why is the rum gone?
.. is more like it
To make sure this "story" wasn't really a joke! My god is sure in heck sounds like one.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Complain loudly and complain often. Tivo is not on the most stable ground that they can afford to piss off their user base. As soon as this starts happening on my machines i will be calling them threatening to cancel my subscription.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Interesting how now, despite the fact that you pay like 10 bucks a month for the service, TiVo feels they can serve up the most horrible type of media ad, the wretched pop-up.
At least they could've just raised the rates a little, I don't know how much people would've complained.
Alright Slashdotters, somebody throw up a link to a build-it-yourself Linux PVR unit.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Once again, ReplayTV! Some will see the fact that it is pretty much a dead platform as a negative but really, it is a positive. DNNA is not going to waste their time with this type of stuff. As long as they continue to deliver program schedules (and they will), the things will just work. See, the lack of programming staff is a positive!
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
We the users are willing to put up with ads to a certain extent, but beyond that, we will use whatever technology it takes to remove them because they are too annoying.
Advertisers simply have to learn to place ads below this annoyance threshold, and they will reap the rewards. One example of a company that 'gets it': Google. Their ads are sufficiently innocuous that it's not worth the trouble to block them or get rid of them. The result? They make lots of money off of ads.
The big networks should realize this. They want to keep their current paradigm, where a person watches 15 minutes of commercials for every hour of TV. That won't work in the future, since the users will use something like TiVo or a download that has no ads in order to get around the annoyance. If, on the other hand, the network offered us a free download of our favourite show, and during each ad segment, there was a single 10-second ad (and it was relatively funny or cool), then we wouldn't skip past it, and they would make lots of ad money.
I think these companies need to wake up to what consumers are really willing to put up with. We are willing to watch ads and buy products we like, but we are not willing to have our time wasted.
If people dont like this, just program your remote to do a 30 second skip instead of the 30 minute skip or whatever it is defaulted to. A couple of clicks and your past all the commercials. The other skip button will let you skip back 10 seconds if you happen to go too far into the show. It is instant and no chance of ads coming up (i guess until tivo disables it in newer versions).
If memory serves me right, Select -> Play -> Select -> 30 -> Select
Sure don't want to be one of those people. This is not what I bought a TiVo for.
Pop-up blocker plug-ins anyone?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In soccer ads in Mexico, the ads are b/w and transparent (they show at the bottom of the screen). They're brief, and get to the point. I just hope TiVo ads are of this kind, and NOT of the intrusive flashing stroboscopic kind. (Of course I didn't RTFA but hey, i'm at the job ^^;)
Create a great piece of hardware with one of the primary functions being to skip commercials. Wait till you've gained a strong market share. Then put commercials on top of the commercials you're skipping.
It's like when the movie theaters started showing adds on the projectors (with sound) before the movie started. The day I saw the same damn Honda commercial fourteen times in a row before a movie was the day I stopped seeing flicks in theaters.
Rather than pop-up ads, I'm fully in support of pop-under ads, the kind that only show when you turn the TV off.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
If I was paying for a subscription service to a company that is supposed to let me have tv listings and then the hardware sits there recording, I would be infuriated if they wanted to slap pop ups on it too.
I have 2 cable company(TW) dvr's and even they aren't that evil. I love my DVR, but I guarantee that if they start putting ads in the UI, I will switch to MythTV instantly.
The best way for Tivo to make everyone happy is to provide ads while I fast forward, rewind or do nothing at all.
I think that they should work out ways to put ads on the device, for their sake, and for our sake. Just let them develop the best ad, the one we barely notice. Then we don't have to put up with so many other "pop-up" ads and we won't be called theives.
Work smarter, not harder...
Get your Unix fortune now!
I'm sorry, if I allready paid for the machine, and on top of that, I'm paying a monthly fee for the service, I do *not* find it acceptable to have the service push ads at me. If you're going to be pushing ads at me, then start refunding my monthly fee. That's the way things work for me. I'm willing to pay you for your service, no problem. But I'm going to pay you in *either* cash or ads, not both. And seeing as part of the reason I got a Tivo was to skip ads, then replacing those ads with other ads is *not* acceptable to me.
Looks like it's time to finally sit down and build that MythTV box I've been thinking about.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
I wouldn't be surprised if one day, digital TV shows have code that prevent you from watching it if you skip or block the ads.
Hopefully by then, people will have developped hardware to crack such measures.
If not, well, I'll just continue doing what I'm doing now, i.e. not watch TV.
Dear Tivo, The second you start displaying invasive advertising while I'm skipping invasive advertising the the second I cancel my tivo subscriptions. There are plenty of other DVRs out there. Don't be idiots!!!
My gf has been egging me to get rid of the TIVO and go with the cable company offering for a while now. She wants the ability to watch one show while recording another, and the ability to use the DVR with Hi-Def programming. This just seals the deal. I'll be cancelling tonight.
Goodbye Tivo, you'll be out of business soon.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
Actualy it's like putting ads on basic cable. You pay for it, but...
Also, how are TV networks going to take this? Not only are their ads getting skipped, but now other ones are being shown in their place! Crazyness.
But yeah. Lame. Down with TiVo!
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Apparently your desire was never very high in the first place or you would have one already.
I don't have to deal with popups, a small hard drive, a single hard drive and lack of upgradability. Plus, I have 3 tv tuner/encoders so I can record three shows simultaneously while watching a fourth recorded show.
I build my own HTPC using an Abit AN-7, AMD Athlon XP 2500+, Hauppauge PVR-250 tv tuner/encoder cards. It is driven by WinXP Pro SP2 and SageTV.
You can see my HTPC at http://wwww.terrystockdale.com/htpc/htpc_1.shtml .
Terry
I can't spiel!!
Get your Unix fortune now!
And to think that I was considering buying a Tivo. I'm definately going to pass on it now.
Can be found here.
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold." -- Joseph Chilton Pearce
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Cepstral: Quality TTS for OS X, Linux, Windows
Sure, why not? Tivo has more customers than they need, they can risk pissing off a significant percentage and losing them to ad-free competitors (sarcasm intended.) If you had any doubts Tivo was on the brink, this will be the final push. A cheap short-term "cash in" resulting in long-term disaster.
Currently bidding on sig
Just unplug the sucker from the phone jack. Sure it starts to slow down a little when you press the "what's playing now" button, but you never get "new functionality". Of course I'm probably missing out on the good upgrades too.
That is obvious from reading what I typed. Your point is?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I was going to buy a Tivo so I can watch TV without advertisements. If they're just going to shove more ads at me, I guess I'm just going to skip watching TV altogether. *shrug*
Oh well. Nice knowing you, Tivo.
Hey I wonder if we can get a TiVo hack with a popup blocker? (Laugh) :)
I am not talking about some crazy Linux set top box that requires effort on my part. I am talking about going out and buying something and then plugging it in and getting it working like a TiVo.
So, what should I be looking to replace my TiVo with that would do the same things as it?
For all the bitching here have any of you actual researched this? Tivo is planning on dropping the monthly service fee altogether if this is successful. I for one can put up with a couple of ads while I am fast forwarding through commercials to not have to pay a monthly service charge!
They say they're barely keeping afloat, yet how can they have screwed up so badly like this? I mean, they have a monthly fee you have to pay for the service right? That's income generated on a monthly basis...and new subscribers etc etc. And let's face it, the equipment can't be all that expensive (for them).
What I want is to walk into a store and pick up a digital recorder that records on a HD that I don't have the idiotic monthly fee. Just give me a recording device that..you know...comes on at 8pm, records an hour, then goes off at 9pm. It can still have the pause-while-recording feature and the skipping of the commercials and everything...but WHY be tied to a monthly fee bullshit?
Is there such a thing out there without me having to build a MythTV box?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
what are the odds of Tivo raising prices to filter these 'selected ads' i.e. - platinum, gold, silver levels of ad bombardment..oops viewing entertainment experience?
yet again Dilbert mentality rears it's ugly head!
Complete with built-in popup blocking, privacy protection, and a tabbed channel-browser.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I have never understood why TiVO is the PVR that gets all the press. I have two PVRs from ReplayTV that I really like. I don't have ads popping up and I can jump (not just fast-forward) past commercials. ReplayTV did try a pause ad for a while a couple of years back, but cancelled it after users complained. The only ads they have now are an occasional (about 2/yr) ad for a ReplayTV sale or contest.
Let me see:
1: I drive to the movie house (have you seen the price of gasoline?)
2: Pay an insane amount for a theater ticket (not to mention popcorn)
3: Get 5 minutes of commercials for other products (that's before the 10 minutes of trailer commercials for other movies)
4: PROFIT! (for someone else).
Yeah, its happening everywhere because we aren't pushing back hard enough. So far, legislators in one state are pushing the idea that theaters will be requried to post the actual starting time of the movie.
Just how much more of this do you plan to take?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
First off, this isn't new. Tivo has been doing this for months. I first started getting these in January. And to make clear, the "pop-ups" only appear when fast forwarding through commercials, not during shows. Basically a banner pops up and asks you to hit thumbs up if you want more information. I've never hit the thumbs up, so I don't know what happens at that point, but I'd guess it takes you to a prerecorded commercial of some sort or gets recorded at Tivo HQ and a printed packet gets sent out.
Freevo, it's like firefox for tivo. :)
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
Right now I'm in the market for a time-shift playback system. For me it's a good thing that TiVo started doing this now, rather than after I made a (potentially) bad decision.
It's my opinion that TiVo are -- metaphorically speaking -- "shitting in their own nest." I say this because for many people the draw for personal recorder devices are the ability to bypass commercials, ads, marketing, etc. Yes, I admit that isn't why everyone wants playback toys, for me it's the major feature though. Admittedly, it's a harmless thing to place an ad during a fast forward operation, but it makes any alternatives to their product look that much more attractive.
I've heard of MythTV, but I know very little about it. Is it a commercial product or an F/LOSS toy that would require a good deal of geektitude to setup?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
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all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Those ads like "Japanese Killer Seizure Robots" are pretty good if you want to track how many actual lywatch them. Just check the medical information at the end of the year for seizure statistics.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm one of the (un)lucky saps to have this new feature. It makes rewinding and searching for a particular place in a show extremely difficult since the screen is superimposed with an advertisement for Nicole Kidman's latest movie :-(
Currently while watching a commercial supported TV broadcast, an advertiser has a commercial break in the program where they show 30 seconds of video. While using a TiVo and fast forwarding, this 30 seconds of video is blurry and takes less than 30 seconds to play.
...
Based on how it's supposed to work, with the new tags. While watching a commercial supported TV broadcast, an advertiser has a commercial break in the program where they show 30 seconds of video. While using a TiVo and fast forwarding, this 30 seconds of video is overlayed with a different image optimized for shorter visible duration and takes the same amount of time as before that's less than 30 seconds to play.
There is no impact to the way the TiVo functions.
There is no forced watching of ads.
There is no new add popping up.
It's simply a format shift from blurry video to a static image.
It's a way to redefine the 30 second spot. It becomes a less than 30 second spot of variable duration depending on the fast forward speed.
The easiest way to opt out of ads on TV:
Buy premium commercial free programming, like HBO, Showtime, Cinimax, Starz,
Since this is a pilot of the new tags, that obviously isn't working the way it's supposed to, things do need to change. Since it displayed over regular content where it's not supposed to.
Things we don't know:
Is the problem with the TiVo software?
Is the problem with the broadcasters national feed?
Is the problem with a specific cable companies regional feed?
Were the tags added at the start of a commercial and still present throughout the rest of the broadcast?
All of those need to be addressed before any solution is possible.
Love the Tivo concept, *was* planning on buying one, now I think I'll just build my own PVR.
...TiVo has basically nullified one of their main selling points.
TiVo. Skip other commercials, but watch ours.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Might as well just cross them off the list of "Good Guys" as if the deal with ComCast shouldn't have already strongly suggested that, but consider TiVo have had this ability in there all along and, like summoning a sleeper agent to commit some dastardly act (like replace all your Guinness with Budweiser.)
Adios TiVo. Rot in hell.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And reduce your multi-hundred dollar investment in their hardware to basically a dumb VCR -- at best. Yeah, that'll show them!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In france they have (or at least had) one hour of commercials on their channel (Saturday at supper).
It was the most viewed time slot for the whole week!
Tivo, however, could create an "Ads Channel" where if you watch it, you pay less on your monthly.
To keep viewers honest AND interested make it interactive like having a short survey at the end of the commercial.
They could even make it a game or a game-show (name the advertized product!)
What they have done instead is given their user-base a reason to hack their TIVO box or bail right out of their revenue stream!
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Reminds me of getting spam emails advertising programs to stop spam, and popups advertising popup blockers.
All your searching needs (and free money!) - 4Lancer.net
Once TiVo gets the bugs worked out of their system (and yes, TiVo has admitted that it's not working perfectly yet), these banners will appear for a grand total of three seconds and only over a specific ad (TiVos FF at 60x). There won't be a problem with seeing 'when to stop' and such, as the banner will disappear when the ad is over.
Personally, I don't care what's on my screen for those 3 whole seconds, it could be black for all I care.
Frankly, if it's something cool, such as a full length movie trailer or a product I like, then I'll pay attention. If not, I'll still ignore it for 3 seconds like I do now...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
There is nothing new here. My DirectTv TiVO has done this for the last two years. Basically, these "Learn More" info-mercials pop-up during regular commercials, with the thumbs-up icon. I just ignore them and they go away.
I'm annoyed that the Tivo-to-my-PC (the proper name escapes me) is intentionally crippled (yes, I know about the hacks) to only burn DVDs with their lame software, but I'm almost MORE annoyed that the the software revision to support this feature reduces my standalone S2's GUI performance SIGNIFICANTLY. Screen redraws, hitting the Tivo button, etc all take eons now. There's also an annoying font bug where if you go into a show's description in Now Playing and then channel up/down to other shows, the font changes to a kind of blurry, bolder typeface.
I can only imagine that Tivo will eventually bog my S2 down to the point with crap that it's nearly unusable. And this I could probably live with even this and the ads IF Tivo had the brains to come out with an updated standalone box that was worth buying other than for a slightly faster CPU or slightly bigger disk.
But no, Tivo's been staking their future on getting knocked up by a cable company, not on innovating their hardware, so there's no new standalone I can buy that would have WORTHWHILE features like cablecard support (planned for fscking '06???), digital audio recording and playback, a real fast ethernet interface, etc.
Even though I love my Tivo, given what the thing costs relative to my financial commitment with a cable company box, I may have to get used to liking their box, which at least records HiDef.
What a bunch of whiners, most of which don't even own a TiVo nor have used it for any significant length of time.
I'm a mostly happy TiVo Subscriber, while it's a far from perfect product from a far from perfect company it is IMO the best product out there overall. Of all the commercially available DVRs out there the only one that comes close is ReplayTV. Sure a MythTV or other DIY PVR offers better control (that I would like) but is not viable for 95% of American consumers (probably a conservative estimate).
TiVo has , and will continue to make compromises in the services they provide that while detrimental to the users have kept TiVo operational (if not profitable). ReplayTV tried to give the consumer everything and it put them into bankruptcy TWICE.
Admittedly I've yet to see these new ads on my TiVo but as long as they don't interfere with my ability to fast forward (which it doesn't sound like they do) than my core functionality is not impacted and I'm still a happy customer. I think the number of people who find the idea of commercials patently offensive (as is the general theme from non TiVo owning people rushing to decry this) is small compared to the number who won't care what's on the screen while they FF as long as they can get back to the O.C. in 10 seconds.
Does this make me want to dump my Tivo? No, but we had been discussing buying a second Tivo for the bedroom (for multi-room viewing and solving the occaisional scheudle overlap) but after this change we decided against it. Now in a few months when my wife's PC is due for a major upgrade her current small form factor box just got promoted to a MythTV box.
The Tivo menu screen has been cluttered with quite a few ads for the last few months and I have been able to ignore it, but this is a bit more intrusive and annoying. Unless Tivo can adjust it so the ad disappears at a more opportune time, this just became a major drawback. My first Tivo lasted for almost 4 years of heavy use and we replaced it with a newer model over the holidays. Between MythTV and my cable company pushing a DVR it might not be too long before I try other options, at the latest when this current Tivo needs replacing/upgrading.
I experienced this during a buffered live show this weekend. The problem was that the popup is smack-dab in the center of the screen, and even though TiVo claims they are "only" 1/4 the screen size, being in the center of the screen, they completely block where the focal point of the underlying content is. It also seems to be bigger than 1/4 screen, more like 2/3.
The other BIG problem was that it was NOT just during the ads, but during any part of the show I was ffw/rwnd through. I later found out this is a bug in the implementation, and that it's only supposed to be during actual commercial footage. Well it wasn't. I gave up trying to locate the point in the show I was looking for. I was both frustrated and angry with this.
I called TiVo tech support to find out how to get some form of functionality back to my TiVo, and the woman (who had a pissy attitude) actually denied that they were doing this. That ticked me off even more, since now they were telling me I was lying or stupid or something. At some point she just put me on hold, and after a few minutes I hang up and called again.
This time I spoke to a guy who actually confirmed that they were indeed doing this, but insisted it was only happening during commercials I was ff/rwd -ing through. I told him it was most certainly during the actual show footage, but of course he said that was not the case. As I said earlier, that turned out to be true as there is a bug in the new feature that puts the popup over non-commercial content.
TiVo went from a cool company to a company I despise. I recommend anybody interested to look at alternatives instead. And that is what I will tell family/friends from now on as well.
5 minutes? What movie theater are you going to?
Last time I went to the movies (ROTK), it was 35. That made it the last time I go to the movies.
I've had my Tivo for 3 or 4 years and each year it seems like I end up with more junk advertising all over the box.
Does anyone have a screenshot of this ad? I'm reserving judgements till I actually see the damn thing.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Haha, everyone said, "Tivo is nice, be nice to them!! Whaaa" People defended this company, oddly, whenever hacking the units outside of "cool tricks" were discussed.
First you landed encrypted content, now you've got pop up ads!
NOW is the time to replace the Tivo's Linux OS with NetBSD and tools to eliminate Tivo's involvement with the units! MythTivo anyone?
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
There's a quote in the article that a lot of people seem to be missing:
Interactive advertising was part of TiVo's distribution deal with Comcast announced earlier this month.
This functionality was a requirement of TiVo's distribution agreement with Comcast. Rather than 'good company gone evil' I think this is a case of 'desperate company gets in bed with the Devil.'
Now I'm not going to defend this business practice in any way. I've been using the DirecTiVo since day one and have evangelised the product on many occasions in the past, but the second I start getting invasive pop-up advertising during FF I'll shed a tear and move on to something else. TiVo MUST know that this is the sentiment of a significant and vocal number of the install base, which makes me think that they saw no other way forward for themselves.
A sad day indeed for TiVo enthusiasts, and definitely I feel a sign of the 'End of Days' for TiVo.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
A few days ago, I'm watching a program, and a commercial pops on the bottom 40% OF THE SCREEN, squashing the video up to the top. Lasted for about ~20 seconds, and didn't have ANYTHING to do with the video.
Spam, at it's worst.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Now that my Series2 is on schedule to be rendered useless, can these be turned into something useful like the Series1 boxes running Linux?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I have a Dish Network DVR box that still has instant 30 second and back 10 second skip. Hit the skip button 5 or 6 times and I'm completely through most commercial breaks in a second or less. The "fast forward" stuff is crap on a DVR!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm cancelling both DirecTV and Tivo. And when the nice folks at DirecTV ask why, I'll say because of Tivo's shennanigans. That's why.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Multi-hundred? Mine was $50 up front with an $80 rebate when I signed up with DirecTV. I made $30 getting a tivo.
I wonder if the DirecTV tivos are safe from this due to DirecTV's policy of never updating their version of the tivo software... finally, a benefit!
Part of the deal Comcast made with TiVo is to license TiVo's advertising software.
Pecs. Damn, sorry about that.
...on TV
"LIAR!", I said.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Lets not forget when they run the trailer of the movie you are about to see...
If you're one of the users who has pop-ups coming during regular programming, call up Tivo. Complain. Play the dumb card and talk to as many people as possible. Start asking for stuff like a new Tivo because yours is obviously broken (since...the pop-ups aren't supposed to be doing this, right?) or credit for your monthly service. It's an 800 charge to Tivo and their customer support time wasted.
Now, who knows what's going to happen...but if enough people complain, they might think again about how and when they place these pop-ups. If you're a user paying a monthly fee for their service and don't like something, it's worth your time to let Tivo actually know about it rather than just the slashdot crowd.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
I've actually been wondering about creating my own "TV Station". My wife and I have a pretty good collection of DVDs going with many of them being TV show collections. I was thinking if I had a bunch of big hard drives I could copy them onto, why couldn't I then run some sort of programming software to create my own tv programming and feed it to the TV? Does anything like this already exist? It could even be set up to only run during prime viewing hours for weeks at a time on a preset channel (ch 3 probably). So you always know that something you like will be on one of the channels but it will have the spontanious feel of real TV that you don't get when picking out a DVD.
I could even make my own commercials, "Nothing to do? Give your husband a back rub!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The ads will be fine as long as they are all for Vytorin. There needs to be job opportunities for people who look like food. I remember an article from several years ago where someone saw Mother Theresa in a cinnamon roll. Thanks to Vytorin, I look at people and try to figure out what food they look like. A taco sounds good for dinner.
Yup, I'm currently boycotting movie theaters because of this.
:(
I remember in the late 80's or early 90's it was either the first or second 'new' Batman movie with Michael Keaton. They had an advertisement for Coke at the beginning. It was even themed for the movie and people were OUTRAGED. For the next 10 years or so there were no more attempts that I remember to do non-movie commercials before movies.
Man how times have changed.. and fast.
But, unfortunately, I don't think our wallets are very loud in these cases. Movie theaters, television, music etc. is all teenager domain.. and I don't see teenagers boycotting any form of entertainment any time soon. Even advertisements are 'cool' for teenagers these days. As long as teenagers are buying up movie tickets and chugging down ad after ad without complaining then it's here to stay
Can't believe people actually use fast-forward instead!
There are two important lessons to be learned from the rise and fall of Tivo. First, don't lock yourself into any pay subscriptions. There is no guarantee they won't turn into ad machines. By subscribing for short periods of time or by using a free or ad supported scheduling service you can demand quality service or walk.
Lesson two, any company can be bought or can partner with one that does not have your best interests at heart. I would not buy a encryption service from the government. I won't buy a garage door opener from a car thief. I won't buy a device to remove ads from TV from someone partnered with those ad providers. It is important to buy products and services from someone motivated to make you happy as their business model. That is no longer Tivo's business model. They make money by making Comcast happy first, and users second. It makes me glad I bought a device without a subscription from someone who does not work with the cable companies. It is also why I don't have to view ads and why I can record what I want, burn DVDs of what I want, and skip 30 seconds without a hack.
Tivo has made a huge mistake, and a very big potential competitor here is MS. I don't trust them at all, but right now they are motivated to making their customers happy with a media center. RIP Tivo.
I usually show up 10-15 minutes late for movies.
Really though you cannot compare TIVO to cinema. TIVO is taking a previous selling point (commercial skip) and is essentially removing it. Can you imagine going to an Imax and once inside they just show the regular movie.
I do have sympathy for TIVO, the linking of provider boxes to the service needs to be stopped.
What a delightfully effective way of sending a sorta "mexican wave" of shudders down the spine of every person who's ever touched Internet Explorer in the last 5 years or so and instantly put them off your product for life.
I've never seen a company go so quickly from "cool" to "near sco-level"
If this is true, they can go feck off and die, and rot alongside the rest of the popup mongering scum.
If it's an early April Fools... well... that's another story!
Ads just sort of slowly appeared over the years and before you knew it...it was like Broadcast TV, only you paid for it.
now the only ones with no ads are the ones with "Premium" content that you pay extra for, like Movie Channels and HBO.
I don't recall any sort of great wailing when ads started back then....'course there was no Interweb then either.
I don't know how we survived.
I like microcars
I would have bought one over Christmas break but I knew this was coming. I also would have subscribed to additional cable programming, but won't do that without a useful PVR.
TV is becoming an activity for people who truly have nothing useful or interesting to do. Who else has the patience for such crap?
I wonder if those ID chips they're planning to implant under our skin will have popups?
Slashdot posts an article about TiVo adding pop-ups : Connections to www.mythtv.org start timing out.
I wish TiVo execs knew to make the correlation.
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
I'm sure a bunch of you are already flaming this item to a crisp, but here's my two-cents and hear me out:
/.ers should be embracing this type of innovation and not railing against it. I'm not defending the networks here, but to get the television we've all come to love requires more than just subscription revenue. As for the crappy stuff, let the market dynamics deal with that (see the recent attrition of the "me too" reality shows).
1) This doesn't change how current users use their TiVo. Since everyone fastforwards anyway, it just makes adds more visible in case you do have an interest in one of them.
2) This keeps the networks and their advertisers (the ones who really pay for the television programming) happy and friendly with TiVo.
3) It opens the door for custom advertising based on viewer's interests and demographic profiles. This is already being done with the programming on television. TiVo does this with their suggestions feature. It's known that unless you block it, TiVo is collecting >aggregate non-correlated data about your viewing habits. So why not have ads that you might actually be interested in watching?
I've been an avid and dedicated TiVo and DirecTiVo user since the technology hit the market and I applaud this approach to using non-invasive techniques to let everyone in the television broadcast market (from networks to advertisers to providers to customers) have their respective cake and eat it too.
cheers,
Levendis47
--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--
No, it's happening because people want things cheaply. The companies want to make money, but they realize if they raise their prices less people will buy what they are selling. So they look to other sources of revenue. Cable could be completely without commercials, but to do so they would have to double or triple their monthly fee (at least), which would drive people away. We can get rid of advertising and pay more up front or pay less up front and get advertising. Most people would choose the latter.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I've had replaytv for going on 4 years and I think it is the anti-Tivo. For me, Tivo is becoming the Microsoft of the DVR world - and I don't mean financially.
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
I did call to complain about this, and the 1st woman I spoke to, denied that TiVo was doing this. The second person I spoke to actually admitted they were doing this, but denied that it was happening during actual show content, which it most certainly were.
Oh, and I did post a message on their official forum. Twice. They deleted it. Twice. It didn't conform to their warm-and-fuzzy "TiVo is the best!" requirement.
Well, I found a new placard at my local cineplex, that was so wrong I laughed.
It said something to the effect:"Come to the movies and you won't see ads". (Of course in reference to TV commercials).
I think while I waited for the movie to start, I actually saw *more* commercials than I would have in 1.5-2 hours of watching TV. Tivo telling me that more ads are not intrusive is simply not enough. If they piss me off, I will cancel my service. Then, I will just buy a dvd recorder and program it myself. (I will prolly start playing with mythtv also just to cover my bets).
Without an image, going only on the description provided, it sounds like we're already seeing this sort of thing.
On several occasions, I've seen a little banner on the top of my TiVo screen during a commercial that says to press the thumbs-up button for more information; pressing the button takes me to a little infomercial area where they can market the product in more depth and detail. It seems like what they're describing is just a slightly different size and form factor, so they can get a better response rate.
This doesn't affect me much anyway, because I see commercials as short films; it's like meta-media, so I tend to watch the commercials rather than fast-forward through them. And besides, TiVo doesn't work well with Comcast's existing cable boxes, so I'd really like the DVR integrated with my cable box; then maybe it could CHANGE THE CHANNEL CORRECTLY. Forking stick-on IR emitters are just garbage.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
They were given their time slot when the show was aired and transmitted over the air or over cable.
:-)
That doesn't give them the right to take up that space on my recording of the event.
This episode makes me happy that I have a ReplayTV and not a Tivo.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Commodore 1992 = Tivo 2005.
Hellooooo ReplayTV.
before TiVo makes a bid to buy out the MythTV project?
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
iPod Shuffle != tampon
It's actually incredibly easy to not connect to TiVo 's service at all and still have your guide data work perfectly. There is a .Net thing called Simplicity that mostly works under Mono that makes it braindead easy. Of course if you have a Windows box sitting around for some really bad reason, then just slap it on there, open a free Zap2It account at labs.zap2it.com and point your TiVo at your own server either by adding a static route in your gateway or go in and hack your TiVo and put your server's ip in /etc/tclient.conf. It takes all of about 15 minutes start to finish even if you don't know anything.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=TIVO
see where your cash is going ?
BARTON, JAMES M.
COURTNEY, DAVID
RAMSAY, MICHAEL
are making plenty (on top of their salary), let the good times roll (for them)
There. I feel better.
As of March 19th, support for the Plextor *-402 series of MPEG4/DivX encoders has been added to MythTV! Finally we have a device that is supported extremely well under Linux and has fully GPL'd open source drivers. I may have once considered getting a Tivo, but I am a lot less likely now. I am not an employee of Plextor, just a happy purchaser of their goods.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Most ad blocking software will block google adsense. Even the big commercial ones block the adsense javascript.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
So they're placing ads in other companies' TV programs. In fact they're skipping the TV channels' ads (in a way) and showing their own ads. Not only is this of questionable legality, this is just dirty. A wicked way of making money.
Ah, but if revenues go down, what will the motion picture industry do? Of course! Blame it on file sharing!
That says it all. I chose TIVO over a nice MythTV box because, through my satellite provider, I can get a dual-tuner TIVO with service for $5/month and $100 up front. If they start showing commercials during my fast-forwards, I'm going to have to cough up the money for a nice SFF MythTV box with 2 tuner cards. I don't really need the extra features, but I'm sure they'll grow on me. Especially checking my e-mail and the news from my couch without having to have a laptop.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
My wife has been aggitating for a TiVo for months. Two days ago, I agreed to get a Comcast DVR instead (which we got). One of the reasons was that I didn't trust TiVo to continue long enough in it's current state to justify buying the TiVo box.
In a way, I feel bad that we didn't get a TiVo, because I would now be able to return it to the store and explain that their changed pollicy has rendered it worthless to me as a consumer.
(For all my self-congratulations I should admit that come a year from now, when Comcast starts trying to do pop-up ads in it's DVR service, I expect that it will be very hard to convince my wife that we should stop the service.)
By using MY hardware to download ads and MY hardware to spy on my tv watching activities. This has been going for years, yet everyone sat back and didn't care. I guess the pop up ads are what the broke the camels back. I'm glad I left tivo a while years ago after i found out that Tivo was using my own PURCHASED hardware to spy on me.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
In my neck of the woods, several gas stations have lcd video terminals on the gas pumps serving up ads while you fill up your tank.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Now's the easiest time to nip this in the bud. If test marketing is negative, the project will get dropped. If you see these ads, call and complain like a SOB or it will get worse. Make sure you threaten to return your Tivo and post nasty message on /..
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
"Just how much more of this do you plan to take?"
None.. thats why i havent been to a movie in over 5 years, thats why i threw my teevee out in the street, thats why ive cancelled nearly all of my magazine subscriptions, thats why i turned off the radio & ripped the knob off.
I overdosed on advertising, & i cant take any more. If they want my dollars, they can find me at the library.
Boycotting the theatre is the wrong idea. You boycott the products being advertised. Anytime I see a product in theatre, I write an e-mail to that company (c.c.ed to the theatre's company) and state that I will no longer (or will decide against) purchasing their product because I find it offensive to pay $____ for a movie and have to watch their ads.
Occasionally, I wouldn't see the ad at the next show (but it was probably coincidence).
There haven't been that many good movies out lately anyway.
The first sign of one of these pop-ups on my (first revision) Tivo, and it's out the door, in favor of MythTV (other good projects include Freevo). There are valid arguments on both sides of the fence, but I never, ever want to see ads - and I'm certainly not going to SUBSIDIZE them by a PAID subscription to Tivo!
Tivo has been spying on us for years, they downloaded advertisements with my hardware and shove them into our tivo interface menus. Pretty uppity for a VCR replacement, and also considering that i also had to pay a monthly fee to use my hardware.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Anyone have pics of this? /glad I have my lifetime on my series 1. :P
Spyware is spyware, and tivo is spyware. Tivo spys on my viewing habbits, Gator spies on my web surfing habits.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Tivo has a subscription based revenue model you fool. They take a loss on the hardware.
Same with ads. I come from the netherlands and am so old that I remember when tv only had ads between programs and not even that on sundays and other christian holidays. Of course we only had 1 dutch channel, yes I am really really old, but german tv had only the occasional ad block in the afternoon (although it was bloody long) and belgian tv has maybe 1 ad per day. BBC of course has none.
But now we got commercial tv and the ads are in the program and last for far to long. It is so bad that with my memory I forget wich program I was watching. Meaning I zap to another channel and don't return OR as is happening more and more just don't watch tv but watch bittorrent instead.
I didn't mind the ads in the olden days. 1-2 minutes between programs. That was acceptable. But 5+ minutes every 15 minutes is to much.
Why should the tv channels care? Well because I went from watching a couple of ads to watching 0 ads.
Same really with the net. It took me quit a while to start with adblockers because the occasional ad I could live with. But they kept forcing more and more ads onto me until I reached breaking point and installed an adblocker. Now I don't see any ads. Including the one for this page. Though shit that slashdot loses income, my breaking point has been reached. Now even 1 ad getting to the adblocker has me instantly adding the url to the block list. To many ads means that I now don't want to see a single one.
This move by tivo seems the ultimate arrogance and ignorance by the ad pushers. The entire idea behind tivo is to skip ads and yet you are aiming your ads at these people? THEY DON'T WANT YOUR ADS. The only thing this can possibly achieve is that either people move away from tivo OR put an embargo on your product.
If ad pushers want to get people to watch their ads they should realize that they need to reduce the amount of ads we see. Companies wanting to advertise. 1 ad in a movie is watched. your 1 ad between 5 minutes of other ads is not watched. TV companies. 1 ad per movie might just fetch you a far higher price AND get more viewers then the other channels.
Then again we are talking about the tv industry. Brains are not exactly their strong point. Currently young males are no longer watching tv so much as before. Strangely this happened at the exact same time as reality tv became a staple diet of every channel. TV bosses reaction. MORE REALITY TV.
From that same logic it is not hard to see how the reaction people zapping away from ads is to show more ads or how you buy ad time on a device designed to skip ads. Maybe Heineken should sponsor AA meetings.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Setting the bootpage with "upgradesoftware=false" will, well, prevent any software upgrades on the Tivo. If you don't yet have the popup ads, I'd suggest applying this right now.
Put her in her fucking place. These uppidity women these days gotta be put in der place.
Yup, I'm currently boycotting movie theaters because of this.
Right, and I'm sure you won't be making any exceptions at all when mid-may comes around.
Why don't they give in and just switch to blipverts already?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Oh dear Jesus, please teach people to use the damn apostrophe correctly. "random and limited number of subscriber's TiVo as of this weekend" When you pluralize "subscriber" there is no need for an apostrophe. In fact, it's wrong. Stop it!
I started getting these ads this morning, they look like the cover of a CD album, however it shows up whenever i fast forward, PERIOD. Not over commercials, not during certain commercials, but the entire time. Not only that, but they block a good 60% of the screen, I can't SEE where to stop fast forwarding!! I have to guess.
For those who have 30 second skip, HOW DO YOU DO THIS?? My remote has no such feature, there is no 30second skip button on my remote or mentioned in the manual. (Series2 40hr)
Come on. Exactly what is the harm with this? You're not missing your show. Tivo's just trying to stay alive. Do remember they're a company, and their goal is to sell things and make money. If it's not ads, it's higher subscription fees or more expensive hardware. If they can reduce my fees and stay in business in a nonintrusive fashion, go for it.
Personally, I'd rather see an ad banner while I'm FFing than take your suggestion and download everything I want to watch. Blech. Sounds like you're trading convenience for anti-ad ideology. I'm not much for ideology, I'll take the convenience of a hopefully still alive TiVo.
Remember, "cool companies with financial problems" become "cool bankrupt former companies" unless they find a way to reduce costs or make more money. I don't see an easy way for them to reduce costs, so how else do they make more money?
I have tivo, and the way it works for me is that I zoom through the commercials, but occasionally I'll see something interesting, back up, and watch it. I might even watch it twice. So advertising is still working. But, if they put some obnoxious ad on top of the screen for something I don't want, I won't be able to see the commercials I'm skipping through. Oops!
No ads, better technology, similiar prices.
What's the confusion?
Welcome to The Land of Corporate Greed. Leave your identity at the door (so we can sell it for more profit).
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
That won't last forever. From: http://news.com.com/TiVo+tests+pop-up-style+ads/21 00-1041_3-5644197.html?tag=nefd.top
"The tools will be tested only on Series2 TiVo owners, but once completed could be applied to Series 1 and DirecTiVo customers. Subscribers can't opt out of the feature, but they can ignore the tags."
There are already adds on the main menu. If adds get constant stuffed down my throat, I'm gone. That's it.
If enough tech savvy people get fed up with Tivo and focus on MythTV or Freevo they're gonna be in deep doo doo. If people work out a Hi-Def MythTV + 300GB HDD + iMAC mini (or like sized) package Tivo is a gonner.
This would be a great time for a lean mean company to make a tiny network DVR with superior features and blow them out of the water. (high-def, portable, perhaps pc games, webtv...)
The movie theaters have definitely gone way too far. Previews were for years thinly-disguised commercials for the theaters themselves, but to take the next step and go to non-cinema related advertising was too much. I quit patronizing the greedy so-and-so's awhile back and I ain't goin' back till they get a tiny bit of humility somewhere along the way.
Probably never, then, that being how I feel. I have no problem with it.
there's pics in one of the tivo community threads... i've posted the same ones here fwiw
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Honestly, do you do this? Or do you just post this suggestion here hoping the billions of
If you do, kudos, I just don't see it happening.
Sad but true. I remember when I first started seeing product commercials in movie theaters; there was a lot of hissing from the audience and a good portion of us walked out demanding (and getting) refunds. But then, I grew up in the 60s, when kids understood better the power of collective action. Since then, it seems, people have been conditioned to expect and accept crap, and no one has even a vague clue that it's their complacency that keeps it coming by the bucketload.
... Dust off your VCR and get on with your life? Does it really matter that the recorded quality isn't quite as good as TiVo? Its not like you're going to archive that episode of Fear Factor to share with your grandkids with your TiVo anyway... (Yeah yeah, we all know videophiles won't like this idea)
If they are available to you, just visit the right theaters. My sister was in town to vist this past weekend, and we took her to a movie at the drafthouse. She was amazed that, before the movie began, there was no Coca Cola slideshow with stupid trivia and ads. Instead, there were funny/interesting film clips from old old TV, movies, and ads. (In this case, they were 1950s clips of robots, as the movie was, well, Robots.)
When the movie started, they showed 3-4 film previews, then started the film.
Last week my wife and I went to a Muppet Movie singalong. Before that film they played music from the Muppet albums while showing old TV show clips. (The host was one of the Mr. Sinus guys and his wife, and he had some games before the movie.)
Remember, they are getting money not just for the movie prices, but also for the dinner. They recognize that they don't need to bombard us with ads, and we appreciate that by only seeing movies there.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Would you rather have the alternative, and pay $20 to see a movie without commercials?
Just make your own PVR its cheaper then paying $15 for Tivo.
Step 1. Design service that blocks televison commericalas
Step 2. Profit
Step 3. Implement system that shows television commercials to users of above service
Step 3. Profit
Proposed step 4: Design new service that blocks above commericals
Proposed step 5: Profit
Proposed step 6: Lather, rinse, and repeat.
as part of your batch jobs..
:)
I do it and it works great
This most likely is the end of TiVo. For most people the main incentive to get TiVo is to get rid of ads. You can imagine if TiVo throws in ads how many people will stop using it and resort to the new digital tuner PC cards with more advanced software that actually cuts out commercials completely.
There seems to be a lot of bugs still in TiVo's software. And i wish the concept of pop-up's would die, there must be other ways to show advertisement that is less anoying.
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
to have advertisers convince program producers to "cleverly" work their products into the show. it's already being done on some sell-out shows, but it will be industry standard if advertisers can't put their commercials somewhere.
Tivo. . .
Monthly Fee for Guide=You Lose.
Lifetime Membership (deal altered unilaterally by popups)=You Lose.
Monthly-fee DVD rental is looking more and more attractive every day. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The movie theaters are responding to the consumer closing their wallet. They are gaining new revenue sources such as advertising to make up for it.
I have to admit, due to high ticket prices, the only time I go and see a movie these days is if I think the movie will take advantage of the large screen format. Otherwise, I wait for it to hit Blockbuster. This may be more of a function of the crap that Hollywood is putting out, but this is how I deal with it as a consumer.
As for Tivo. I find that if Tivo selling two second spots is going to keep them in business so that I can get the functionality from a Tivo that I really need, then I am all for it. Since getting a Tivo (and cranking the drive space up to 320 GB) I no longer worry about what is on TV, and when it is on. I catch what I want on Saturday mornings, and let the rest of the content hit the bit bucket.
Can't believe people actually use fast-forward instead!
You could be prosecuted under the DMCA, and are stealing programming by circumventing these ads.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I, as a Tivo consumer, am willing to make a deal here.
First, I pay the monthly fee, and I truely find value in the Tivo as a device. Enough so that I am willing to make a compromise to keep them in business. I understand these FF ads were key to Tivo getting the Comcast deal.
I have not seen the ads, but from what I understand, the main issue with them is that it is hard to see when to stop fast forwarding.
Tivo has a technology solution for this, but they need to release it.
If I had an accurate commercial skip feature, such that if I hit a button, it would skip the commercials and accurately drop me to the end of the ads, then I would be more than willing to put up with ads for the two or three second interim.
Tivo, does that sound like a deal to you?
Predictions of TiVo's death are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion. In my opinion, the banner adds while fast forwarding are a great idea.
Think about it, advertisers want a captive audience for their advertising. They pay for product placement in movies and TV shows because they know the audience is watching attentively. Not true for running commercials on radio and TV. People walk away for a bathroom break, to grab a snack, or any number of other things.
But if someone fast forwards through a commercial, advertisers know that you will be looking at the screen, because you want to stop fast forwarding before the show starts. You are a very captive audience, and you will be looking right at the advertising.
Users may not like the banner ads, especially as TiVo is currently testing them and working out any bugs. In the end though, the ads are an incredibly good thing for TiVo (the company.) As long as TiVo services, TiVo subscription service will continue, and new TiVo models and features will be introduced. Good for TiVo.
There is definitely more positive than negative with the new banner ads.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
So now we need a pop-up blocker for our PVR's? I don't think so... Goodbye TiVo. Hello generic DVR!
>>I think it'll take a lot of people actually cancelling their subscriptions...
Count me in.
I've been preparing for this moment for the past several months. My MythTV box is waiting, ready-to-go, so the instant I see my first fast-forward advertisement I'm calling Tivo and telling them to cancel my subscription, effective immediately.
I guess I'll be checking my tivo recordings tonight, phone in hand.
Nah, I just skip 'em now. Turns out I'm growin' brain cells back too, as a bonus side effect...
Recently a friend took me to an Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin, Texas. There were no commercials before the movie (just some really old cartoons), and there are tables in front of every row to put food on. Nice experience; I had stopped going to movies partly due to the commercials at the beginning.
The 5min ads before the movie doesn't bother me.
It in fact gives me time to settle down. Buy a coke or popcorn if I want to, without missing any of the movie.
Also, if I'm late or other people are late, I don't mind if they block my view for the ads or trailers.
I *do* enjoy movie trailers as it keeps me interested in whats to come.
If there were no ads or trailers, I'll be missing the start of the movie in almost every movie.
However, I do agree that the time given to these should be cut down. There should be no more than 5 mins of ads and trailers combined. ( 2 mins for ads and 3 mins for trailers max. ) A theater violating this should be fined for wasting time. Also, theaters should post the actual start time of the movie.
Anyone know if this affects the 30 second skip hack? I can't imagine it would, and this is all I use...
This is an escalating battle. The more you think you deserve to avoid ads, the more ads-per-second there will be for you to avoid.
See, the fact that you are avoiding them means that they might have an affect on you, therefore they are working.
No, they're only "working" if they make you more likely to buy the product (or whatever the aim is). If MSN came and spray-painted an advertisement on my dog without permission, it would almost certainly have an effect on me.
It wouldn't make me more likely to sign up with MSN.
Granted, a lot of people underestimate the power of annoying/moronic adverts; ad-makers don't care if you like the ad or not, so long as you're more likely to buy their product as a result.
However, conversely (for the reasons above), getting someone's attention doesn't always mean you'll buy the product. Piss them off too much and that subconcious "name recall and nothing else" that gets you to buy the product turns into concious "I hate [name recall] because _____".
No business was ever "sucessful" based on destroying someone's livelyhood. As Guido says, "It's not nice to F___ with another man's livelyhood."
The aim isn't to destroy someone's livelihood. That's a side-effect. They should do their job in a less irritating manner.
And it's weird; I don't know how seriously you meant that last quote, but the type of person I visualise it coming from (Guido?!) is the same type of person who would say something like "The world doesn't owe anyone a living" two sentences later, and fail to see the contradiction.
Hey, it's human nature to wrap self-interest up like that. We all do it to some extent.
But, as I said, the ad-man's livelihood is a side-effect; and many businesses have been successful by avoiding just that. Dell, for example, cut out the middleman. They are successful.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
You don't need that library anymore.. seriously.. how many movies can you watch in a week?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Troll bait this if you must but, I'm still amazed that people care about TV shows so much that a product like Tivo was even invented. And before I hear a "practice what you preach" cry, I have no TV, just a cable modem, my systems, a radio and everything else I have on dvd.
/rant off
Thats not to say I dont occasionally watch tv, basically for the new battlestar galactica and a few simpsons episodes.
When I read (mainly on slashdot) what the TV companys are trying to do in controlling basically every aspect of our lives via tape recording flags, HD signals and a never ending onslaught of these fucking ads it saddens me.
You want to really be "the people" and make voices be heard? Turn off the tv's. Get your news from newspapers and screw the rest of it.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Now I won't be the least bit tempted to spend the money on a Tivo!
I do this. Usually i get a generic response. Occasionaly I get a message saying that it will be passed onto their marketing department (which probably means a shredder), but if a marketing dept thinks that a method is having a negative effect on their business, they will consider using a more effective medium.
I am considering getting a new car, possibly a Toyota, but I have seen too many ads from them in theatre. I am probably going to write to their central office and ask if they can give me any good reason that I shouldn't dismiss their company as a purchase option on that basis. Maybe i'll get an incentive or bonus feature or something in compensation.
In fact (imagine this), I've even been curious enough to go ahead and follow the link! That's never been the case with ads on websites. The few I've seen have been cool ads, and because "it's tivo(tm)", I can also pause and rewind the ads. Nice.
So, for you doomsayers... this is not the beginning of the end. This is a nice compromise. It doesn't affect the real content, and it's completely optional and unintrusive.
Bravo, TiVo.
This is ridiculous. I don't think it's outrageous to try to create ad revenue, but TiVo has been feature-frozen for years, essentially. No new innovation, same terrible interface for typing out words painfully through the infamous "ouija board screen," same awfully slow sorting algorithms, same ancient hardware, RAM limitations, lack of customizability....
And the "innovation" they come up with in 2005 is to find a way to spam us? Thanks, TiVo.
Currently hooked on AMP
If the new advertising doesn't interfere with our TiVo (you gotta admit, it's no longer my tivo, if the mothership keeps dinkin' with it,) then NBD, I'll just deal with it.
If it does become intrusive - either it'll run Setiathome, or I'll pop out the disk and "recycle" the rest - maybe in a MythTV box (of course, the hollywood political whores will probably make that some sort of terrorist activity...)
what if VHS recorders ever did something similar. I mean what if the VHS recorder could tell when you were recording TV and would pop up ad's when you fast forwarded through commercials on the final recording. I don't know if it would even be possible, but if they found a way to do it a LOT of people would be pissed off. So what is the difference here? I don't own a tivo but I would be really pissed off if I did and had to find some way to disable this "feature". I had been considering buying a Tivo vs. setting up a MythTV box, but now I have a reason to go the MythTV route... just my 2 cents.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Boycotting the theatre is the wrong idea. You boycott the products being advertised. Anytime I see a product in theatre, I write an e-mail to that company (c.c.ed to the theatre's company) and state that I will no longer (or will decide against) purchasing their product because I find it offensive to pay $____ for a movie and have to watch their ads.
Do you really believe a movie ticket can pay for everything that the theater offers, their staff pay included? Welcome to the real world. They do it to keep the ticket prices down, so it is a benefit for both you and them. If you don't like the ads then close your eyes and ears or WAIT outside the showroom till the ads have been shown. No one forces you to go in 5-10 min. before showtime.
I've never had a Tivo, and don't see any reason to get one now. I have satellite TV, with a dual-tuner DVR that holds 100 hours. I can't auto-skip commercials but I can ff through them without any ads coming up (for anything time-shifted obviously, I can't ff thru realtime commercials since that would involve fast forwarding thru reality into the future). So, is there anything Tivo would offer me for the price of the box and the subscription fee? The only thing I can think of is the recommendation thing, but I don't need that enough to pay anything for it. That's probably something the satellite providers will add to their DVRs eventually anyway. Tivo looks to be a company without much future to me, or am I missing something?
Yeah, I've never figured out the ads. They play and endless loop of boring bullshit trivia etc before the movie start-time, and then jump into the ads. A lot of people arrive ahead of time... why not put the advertisements on *before* the times when the paid-for movie starts?
whats coming up in mid-may?? another starwars flick?
you couldnt PAY me to sit through another one of those.
another LOTR sequel? Ill wait till its out on DVD so i can see the whole thing unedited.
yea ive seen them on ATM's too, yay.
I also noticed that the ATMS that play ads charge the same (if not more) access fees as the non-advertising ATM's
As a consumer, I can choose to ignore the ads. I can also choose to tell the company that I see the ads as a negative point towards their product. Its not like i'm standing up and disrupting the movie or anything. I'm writing an e-mail after the fact.
There seemed to be theatres in existence before advertising came into place, and funny enough, I didn't see a ticket price drop when they started doing it. They must've been making at least some money without advertising. Besides, they make most of their money on overpriced concession prices. You can buy kool-aid for only dollars a glass!
Not to mention the onboard Ethernet (TiVo doesn't have it), no-phone-required-ever (TiVo doesn't have it), and DVArchive (TiVo doesn't have it).
I had TiVo, until I learned better.
I used DOS until the Macintosh came out.
I used the Mac until I got on the NeXT.
I used teh NeXT until they stopped paying me to use it.
I got on the Solaris bandwagon in 1994.
I know good stuff whenI see it, and then I bail to the better stuff.
Get a Replay. TiVo doesn't have it. And Replay doesn't have the intrusions and adware that TiVo does have.
I agree with your tactics here and want to recommend an additional technique. When the new Lucas turd is released at your theater, get ten of your like-minded anti-commercial friends together to go see the film. Buy tickets for one of the first weekend screenings that are expected to sell out. This is key. As soon as the commercials start, have all ten of your team march out to the manager, and demand your money back on those tickets because of the commercials. The manager will give you a refund, and have to swallow the ten empty seats on opening weekend as lost potential revenue due to the blight of pre-movie commercials.
For those interested, here's a website organizing people to protest commercials in theaters. Interestingly, these folks call themselves "CaptiveAudience.org" -- Regal Theaters uses the term "captive audience" on the section of the Regal website where they try to solicit corporations to buy ads in their theaters. (Check the flash animation on the left.)
Sign the petition to be presented to Regal Cinema.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Pop-ups? On my TIVO-recorded-specifrically-so-I-could-skip-ads-if -I-owned-a-tivo box?
I'm not going to buy one.
One less potential customer. Not like you care.
Don't feed the trolls (tt) - Especially the advertiser trolls, they're slimier, ew.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
It's the same with TV (yes, we're still talking about TV, I know).
Back in the good old days, there was Television, and for a time, it was good. People watched with delight their favorite TV shows. But soon, lives became dependent on the idiot box. Schedules were bent to cater to the television world.
Then, smiling with their own ingenuity, the television advertisement was born. Combined with national networks and the widespread existance of televisions in the homes of Americans, there is no better way to reach a national audience. Television networks have grown and now offer 22.8 minutes of actual progamming vs. the 7.2 minutes of advertising time per 1/2 hour segment. An individual, watching TV for 3 hours a day is exposed to 43.2 minutes of advertisements. Most are 15 seconds, though some are 30 second spots. And thus did man become the architect of his own destruction.
The years went by, and technologies become more and more complex, not necessarily more useful, but more complex. The dawn of the TiVo promised a world of television, without a demand on the viewer to cater his or her schedule to he programming guides arbitrated by network knuckle-heads. For a time, it was good. But rumors of extra features began to emerge. The TiVo application spying on you under the guise of helping you, but all the time watching your every move.
Present day, the average viewer has some form of high bandwidth entertainment: cable or satellite. Most charge upwards of $40 a month to watch additional programming, which is cram-packed with advertising: 7.2 minutes every 30 minutes, to be approximate. And now, you pay for an additional service, on top of your high bandwidth entertainment, an overly complicated system of recording said programming, the TiVo costing you an additional $13 a month (as of this writing). At a minimum, you're paying $53 for advertising, when you could be getting it for free with public television on UHF and VHF.
History is repeating itself, but it's twisted. It's OK to have advertising on free networks, but when you pay for something and are served advertising, obnoxious advertising to boot, it's time to trash the idiot box. Anyone with a TiVo should demand a refund (they're still $100!)
Here's what the add looks like on my TV. It came up over the show content in FF and reverse. http://gadgetpile.blogspot.com/2005/03/tivo-tactic s.html
I don't see how they can get away with describing this as an icon on their web site.
If viewers offered to pay for specific channels, with monies collected from this service channeled back to the content producers, would this reduce/eliminate the amount of advertisements consumers are subjected to while watching TV?
When I purchase a movie on PPV I don't receive commercials. The same is true if I purchase premium channels and watch a movie (HBO). I know movies != television programs, but how different are the two beasts, and can the lessons learned from commercial free movie-viewing be applied to show-viewing?
Do it for da shorties
TiVo has lost its way.
I currently have a DirecTV / TiVo, which doesn't get fast-forward ads.
However, I last used a standalone TiVo with version 2.5 of the software.
In three major revisions, they've added almost *nothing* to the underlying recording experience. Season Passes haven't gotten any better, the interface hasn't gotten any better.
With a few exceptions, TiVo is the same as it was when I left. Except now it has a "TV Guide" logo (ironic considering the guide data comes from Tribune, Gemstar's main competitor). Oh, and there are now FF ads.
It's now $13 a month for TiVo.
Don't give me crap about how it "costs money" to deliver guide listings.
My copy of XP-MCE was $120. With a TV tuner and a remote, I spent about $210 to upgrade my box to Media Center Edition.
No monthly fees, no advertisments, and a DVR that's every bit as good as TiVo.
Sorry TiVo.
All I get is features that I actually want and I get them 3-5 years before Tivo "innovates" them, I don't get pop-ups, and even commercials are autoskipped. I've really been missing out.
Just further proof that advertising and mass marketing media conglomerates kill great products.
That's why I use MythTV. I don't even have to FF through commercials anymore, it just skips them for me!
Why on earth would anyone buy this "redundant technology"? My VCR is more than sufficient to handle my needs. (Not that there are too many good shows on TV anymore anyway.) I never had any intention of spending extra money on these stupid DVRs and now this justifies my belief that they were useless from the beginning. Mod me troll if you wish, but the truth hurts. These guys were in it for the money and suckered a lot of people in.
Over in Germany, movies in theaters ALWAYS have 20 minutes of advertising before they start. The good thing, though, is that you often have numbered seats, and can just show up later to skip the ads.
I cancelled my TiVo and cable TV after several years of use. I now use NetFlix for commercial free content, including all of the obscure stuff that Blockbuster will never carry. :)l /
I then use the internet for news, including all of the obscure stuff I'm interested in that CNN/Fox/et al will never cover.
The world has officially moved from Push to Pull and with Firefox and ad-blocking software I have a commercial free existence. I just wish we could get rid of roadside billboards
See Wired's article on Push=>Pull
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.htm
But it looks like they seriously don't limit your max rentals per month.
I still have the feeling that they'll cut you off, or something if you're continously renting 60 dvd's per week.
rent disc
walk to car
place disc into laptop
rip to external hd
return disc, rinse, repeat
?????
profit!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Any good websites out there for recycling TiVos?
Can you run NetBSD or a standard Linux distro on them?
works every time.
Seriously though, most movie chains work out a deal involving concessions (candy/soda/etc) and advertising.
My local movie theater is relatively new, 14 screens, mostly stadium style seating... but i don't go there as often because they stopped carrying goobers, snowcaps, raisinettes, and all the other standard goodies. Happened around the same time they switched between coke & pepsi drinks.
There's a lot of corporate jockeying behind the scenes.
Like i said, just show up late.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
it was either the first or second 'new' Batman movie with Michael Keaton. They had an advertisement for Coke at the beginning.
Are you quite sure it was Coke? I thought he took the Batmobile for a drive-through burger.
I noticed one of these last night while I was watching 24.
I was fast forwarding and a little picture poped up above the progress bar on the screen. I stopped to check it out.
If they fix the problem so it doesn't popup in the show then I don't see a problem, it worked well, and didn't get in the way at all. I could ignore it, or not, my choice.
No, as for the software upgrade that led to this, I'm not happy with it.
TivoToGo service is ok; but the new software has some performance issues.
I've been using MythTV and really like it.
For those who want a fast install, check out KnoppMyth
Of course there's always Freevo
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
Next people will be buying TiTiVoVos to skip over the adds TiVo displays whilst skipping over adds.
How bout a refund for all lifetime subscribers for breach of contract by changing the deal signed to
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
This is fucking CRAP. I was watching tonight and the god damned cock sucking ads poped up while I was REWINDING to see what I had missed. HTF am I susposed to know where to stop my rewind if your CSA(1) is in the way and I CANT SEE the picture!!!!
Sorry, maybe you noticed I'm upset. I sent a "message" to tivo, no real email or CS address available on their web site, so I am venting here.
1) Cock Sucking Ads
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
I think it should be illegal to bundle ads with content, but that isn't going to happen!
But how about this: you know how news sites let you select *news* you're interested in? How about an ad site that lets you select *ads* you're interested in? I don't know about you, but I *like* to read the PC Connection catalog. Suppose you could go to a site that had collected all the latest digital camera ads for you? Or all the latest anatomically-correct fullsize lovedolls? If this site were "not evil", it could encourage users to rate ads for annoyingness and you could set a threshold and...
Advertisers have been trying to *sneakily* figure out what we want to buy so that they can *force* ads on us. Why don't they just *ask*?
You obviously have not seen one of these ads. I got an ad for The Interpreter last night (apparently the only ad TiVo's got right now) during "24" - there were no ads for this movie during the ads I was ff'ing through (that I could see, anyway).
...that intrusive content specific feature that's been on the service since 2001.)
Omg, and THIS got modded informative? The original poster was correct. I too have a Tivo; I too watched 24 Monday night. And the billboard only popped up OVER the video for the movie being advertised. In fact, I was so suprised I rewound it and checked again. Interestingly, the ad only comes up during the fast forwards over that segment of video (the same way the 'thumbs up message' comes on only during ads for certain shows. (Remember 'thumbs up'?
Uh, no. The ad appears for the entire duration you are fast-forwarding.
Uh, no. You are entirely wrong. Wrong. If you didn't delete 24 go back and look if you can't take the heat. It doesn't use a "commercial detect", it obviously uses an on-band signal in the commercial itself. I don't know what's up with your Tivo but 'thumbs up' has never worked incorrectly (i.e., never appeared for the wrong program, never displayed for more than the commercial it was attached to).
What interested me the most, is that during a 3-arrow fast forward (what is that 8x? 16x? I know 1-arrow is 2x), anyway 3-arrow fast-foward the billboard for the movie with it's opening date appeared on the screen for 1 second in the middle of the video of the ad it was over lapping. I can't imagine how this could be any more offensive than those ads that just have text or still images for their entire 30 seconds. The same effect is achieved -- you get some idea of the product being advertised as it flashes by FOR ONE OR TWO SECONDS. This is the best they can hope for I guess.
In short, these ads totally destroy one of the main reasons for using TiVo, and when you see one, you'll feel the same.
I totally don't feel the same. I think the implementation is great. It's very well thought out. The image is only displayed over the duration of the ad and only when fast-forwarding. The image doesn't obscure the entire video so you can verify this yourself. Every other function is not affected (replay, slow-mo, paused frame advance, rewind, 30-second jump, 15-minute jump, etc. do not trigger the billboard).
You are totally fudding and got modded up. Unreal. Just like all the other Tivo naysayers. "Tivo is horrible, I'm gonna throw mine out, blah blah." Fine, build a Myth box or get an eyeTV, but you won't go back to watching 'real' TV. I'd rather not watch television than watch it without Tivo.
(disclaimer, I bought a series one Phillips Tivo in 2001 and a series two at the beginning of last year, so that should reveal my bias. I've spent more on Mt. Dew than I have on my Tivo subscription.)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Please stop trolling unless you can actually back up what you're saying with something new.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
makes this a non issue.
Having people pay for advertising is a bad idea. That's why AOL sucks! I own both, a TiVo and a ReplayTV. As soon as I see the first ad on my system, I will cancel my subscription. I am not willing to pay $12.95 to be bombarded with commercials. One of the main reasons why I have a PVR, is to skip commercials. In my opinion, TiVo's move will back-fire.
You may not be able to skip them on the original disks, but you can rip that misfeature out if you get a DVD-Burner. There are also rumored to be players that do not implement the UOP restriction portion of the DVD format license, but since I picked up my DVD player (old RCA Div-X unit) 2nd hand for $15 and it works OK otherwise, and since I've got over twice as many DVD-* drives as computers, I'm sticking with "Fair Use" copying as my solution.
Having the FBI/Interpol/&c. legal warnings unskippable is fine in my book. But using user operation control to have the commercials unskippable isn't even vaguely acceptable. If I found more recent Disney releases watchable (enought that I encountered this regularly), then I'd probably be returning the originals as "Broken By Design" to cut out Disney's profit margin.
In the longer picture, I think that this is one more sign of the shortsighted exploitation attitiude that's been running the House of Mouse. Walt ran the shop with a long term outlook--his well preserved film library being the obvious example. He might well have enthusiastically praised having trailers on DVD's, with perhaps (as is not uncommon) every spare space on the disk used to add more in the "coming attractions" section to the DVD menu... but NOT a "watch this or else" section. I can almost hear Walt's ghost now: "There is a difference between subtle and stupid, and it is not subtle, stupid!"
It's very like the difference between targeted mass email that you can opt out of, and SPAM that you just can't avoid. It's generally bad for long term planning to annoy your customers, especially customers growing nostalgic for their own childhood just as they start getting sizeable disposable incomes, and start raising their own children... that is to say, the next generation of customers.
OK, I'll go find my happy pills now....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.