Slashdot Mirror
Tivo Testing Internet Download Service
knarfling writes "Yahoo News writes that customers will soon be able to download TV shows to their set-top boxes via the Internet. There is even speculation about being able to download an entire season at a time. Right now there are only three shows from the Independent Film Channel available on Aug 19, but it is a start. Will other companies follow this lead, or will this die down after the hype is over?"
don't you geeks realise that you are just a pack of theifs?
iTunes for television shows? This is the next logic step. And, because of this, the viewer isn't forced-fed the shows the networks choose. Maybe this means that excellent shows like futurama will not get canceled just because the network doesn't want to pay for them.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
really it's just Podcasting with Video. Which I guess it needs a name may as well take the worst one.
It's certainly an interesting concept but i'd like to see what savings are passed on as a result. I've seen too many services like this charge more or the same for something you could buy on DVD.
and if it's free there'd have to be ads. I suppose it would be nice to get an entire season of a show I want to watch rather than have to wait weeks. But then the producers would have to increase the release schedule's.
I just don't see it working.
Have you metaroderated recently?
bt takes searching for a bit for a tracker with a quality rip, and means you have to deal with resource hogging apps.
Mythtv means I have to build my own, which is fine, but also has a bit of a complicated setup, along with maintenance.
Tivo on the other hand looks low maintenance. Being able to add drives and transfer to my linux/mac/windows boxes and burn to dvd is my biggest concern with Tivo currently. If they give me shows before they air, then I'd be thrilled and more than willing to purchase a boxtop from the company. Being able to watch stargate before the air date (friday is night out night) and house on some other night would be great.
I read the Tivo community site from time to time. It's a comminuty which Tivo allows some employees to participate in. There were some rumblings from an employee of a super secret beta test a few weeks ago... and he was looking for beta testers. Perhaps this was it.
The reason we get so much tat on television right now is because people actually want to watch it, as painful and fath-in-humanity destroying as that is.
We get this, people are just going to download the same crap they watch on TV.
PCWorld did an article on how to do it... But there's also free software out there if you look. I use media hopper for spanish... There's OHUK you wanna learn british
I've always been surprised by the fact that most TV networks never allowed consumers to download content. I was especially confused when the cable modem became prominent. We're already watching your shows over cable; why not let us keep them on our computers?
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Perhaps this is the way we can get Dead Like Me back?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
BBC streams, Comics (comics.com and ctrl+alt+del), , TVTome episode guides, Adult media (movies and images from 5 porn sites), Danish radio and TV (DR news, DR boogie, DR radio), RAI Click TV (italian TV streams), SVT TV open archive (Swedish), YLE24 Mediasaali (Finnish radio and TV), XBMC Forums reader (simple reader), History Channel, Movies @ archive.org (lots of movies in high quality), Online music labels (monotonik/mono211), Dave's trailer page
also google video gives you access to some fox newscasts.
my point is that you don't tivo for this.
ps: because of my xbox, i basically have The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tivo'd through the internet
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
If you can choose what show you watch, won't that just mean that there will be fewer and fewer shows? Because people will stop ever having to watch "whatever's on" -- they'll just watch the shows they already know they like. So the super popular shows will be watched even MORE frequently.
I recently read a New York Times article that I thought spoke to this theme. It was an op-ed by David Brooks called "All Cultures Are Not The Same." I don't agree with everything he says (i feel it's too simplistic) but I did think what he said about how American's increased mobility causes them to cluster into groups where they already feel comfortable.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I've been reading too much Best of the Web, I think, because I initially read the headline and thought "Do you download the entire Internet, or just part of it?"
Yes!
http://www.akimbo.com/
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
The article suggests that the service will not survive if it cannot present a better financial prospect to the big dogs in the game who are earning more money with the current commercial driven market. History in capitalism denotes a different reality however. The success of the service will depend on whether the big dogs are threatened by delivery of services by companies who are willing to accept a lesser profit. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. Introducing a better technology that people want for less money. They use ESPN as an example as to why it would fail unless they can generate more dollars to attract players like ESPN. When a sports delivery service, that cannot reach the audience they they want, is willing to earn a smaller profit signs on with this and people get the information they want from the smaller service, ESPN will start to feel some real pain as their market share dwindles. They would then be the ones to be forced to adopt the new delivery service, despite the lower profits, to survive themselves. The only power ESPN has in this case is to try to keep people paying the higher fees by intimidation and doom casting at Tivo and the likes. In the long run ESPN wand their buddies may very well be forced to play the cheaper game we as consumers actually want. ESPN and other large commercial driven providers are not goig to buy in. We as consumers have to send the message that 'homey don't play that no more'
pretending to be English and pimping his crappy site
off his DSL again (user-0c8h4ji.cable.mindspring.com), check his profile comments and you will see, of course he's just a ">poor black kid from NYC brit-wannabe cos he obviously aint proud of USA
but thats what 24 year old black Americans do right? pimp something, still give him a call
... that says this never happens, or, at least not from Tivo.
I love Tivo, and have two of them myself, but I really think they need to release some of ther other "this is being tested" stuff first. Case in point, HDTivo(promised 2002 or 2003, I can't even remember.) Networking on the DirecTivo, promised for years...
Tivo still makes the best DVR, but they never release anything new, fully featured. They even caved on the home media vision, buckling to the MPAA. This may eventually be released, but it wont be from Tivo and it won't be as good as it could be.
Tivo rules, i just wish they really would for a change.
Who cares about downloading their TV crap-o-rama? I want to upload my own reality show crap-o-rama! SHAZAM!
--
make install -not war
Now I can (almost) do what I've been doing for a few years -- watch (almost) any TV show by downloading it from the Internet and then watching it (almost) any time I want, (almost) as many times as I want, and then I can (almost) share it with (almost) any one else that I (sort of) want to!
I already pay for my ISP connection; I pay an electric bill; phone bills; taxes; I already am forced to watch millions of advertisments every day, almost evey waking moment.... You know what? I don't want to pay anymore. If the TV shows and Movies and Music were created by and sold as independent works of art, I'd throw a couple thousand annually into a few pots -- even now I have paid memberships to art movie houses, I subscribe to cool magazines, I buy Indie band's Internet label CDs -- but I dont't want to give any more to the culture machine!
TiVo, good luck to you, but at this point, when you're groveling to fit into the media -corporate-art bullshit system, I gotta tell you: I don't care if you flop right out of business. Once, you seemed cutting edge, subversive, and novel; now you seem like a load of horse shit. And I won't eat!
I would rather pay for a service, to get a TV show when I want it, rather than waiting for a certain time for my TIVO to record it so I can watch it later. Let the downloading begin.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
12345
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It would be nice if they put some of their resources into fixing problems with Tivo2Go that make it almost useless instead of new features:h p?t=228168&page=2&pp=30
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.p
Because if they let you keep it on your computer, you can share it from your computer. You can also edit out commercials and otherwise modify it.
The production studios don't want that. They want to have complete control over when, where, and how you watch everything. They don't believe in "fair use;" they want every penny they can scrape away from you for even thinking about their show. That's why technologies such as filesharing are so scary--it takes the control away from the studios and gives it to the consumers (albeit mostly illegally, thanks to big-time corporate avarice leading to the systematic undermining of consumers' legal rights).
I wish that someone would come up with the idea of "open source television," where programming is produced for free consumption and distribution, and financed by donations or additional fee-based services. You know, art for art's sake and all? Universities should do something like that.
I really *tried* to be a big Tivo fan. And heck, the concept is darn good overall. But I went back to my home-brew MythTV box for a while.
... Tivo has far too slow of a network connection for such things as downloading live programming from the net! I couldn't ever get it to find my wi-fi 802.11g USB interfaces. Had to settle for an old Linksys wireless b interface, and it takes almost 45-50 minutes to download a single movie from it to my PC using "Tivo2Go". The same xfer would take only 5-6 minutes between 2 PCs on my LAN over my 100mbit ethernet connection. Why in the world didn't these boxes come with wired 10/100 ethernet RJ-45 ports on them? At least in their later revisions....
For starters, my Series 2 stand-alone Tivo suddenly died on me. It was fine one night, and the next day I turned on my TV to see a black screen with a line of text at the top that simply said "Unexpected CPU Detected!". (Huh? What CPU *were* you expecting anyway??) A couple reboots didn't fix a thing. Just got the intial couple splash screens followed by the black screen and odd message. I can only assume the CPU went bad in it?
Being out of warranty, I have to pay Tivo $79 to swap it for another unit. (Irritating, too, because plenty of people would sell me a used/working Series 2 Tivo for much less - but then my lifetime channel subscription would be lost, since they tie those to the *box*.)
But beyond all that
This particular service may indeed die off, but others will undoubtebly sprout up to take its place. This format, on much more grand of a scale, of course, is the future of the idiot box. Content that -you- specify, downloaded and presented to you, the viewer, when and how you want it. Think of an interactive 'TV guide', where you place your entire week's worth of programming, that you've set to download, by time and day of the week. Or have the set-top randomize it for you, if you aren't as picky as some of us are. This may take a bit to catch on, but honestly, I think the general public is becoming much more pissed off at having to sit through ten minutes of bullshit for twenty minutes of content. And let's not forget cable "packages", that give you two-hundred channels you don't give a flying fuck about, but if you don't subscribe, you lose the five or ten that you actually -do- watch. I think the time has come for something like this to fossilize the dinosaurs that are still plodding along atm. Hopefully soon..
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
So they're spending 100 times as much money to make 100 little shows, and taking in 2 to 3 times as much revenue?
Even if a "little" show costs 1/10 as much, they're still losing money like crazy.
TV shows are expensive. Renting a studio space will run tens of thousands a month, and that's before you rent cameras, buy costumes, and pay actors, writers, electricians, set dressers, makeup artists, and a small army of other people. And if you want to do a show like Battlestar Galactica, with special effects and really complicated sets, you're spending several million dollars before the first episode airs.
I have been telling all my friends to short Tivo stock for some time now. There are several reasons:
1. Direct TV will drop Tivo eventually (they announced last week), Tivo loses majority of its subscriber base.
2. There are new competing products, with more functionality, cheaper pricing, and innovative download and subscription services coming out on the market very soon. Will make Tivo look like a silly and overpriced product.
3. Integration and convergence of devices. Look at Xbox 360, PS3, etc. And just wait until your brand new LCD or Plasma TV has built in digital video recorder, and allows you to download or stream movies, music, and alternative content from your PC AND direct from the internet.
4. Tivo won't get mainstream content. The studios hate them! The entire internet delivered audio / video services will change very rapidly over the next 2 years, don't expect Tivo to be a part of it! It just threatens the Tivo business model, and they are not invited.
5. iPod for the living room is coming, including video.
the list goes on and on and on............
Real men don't need signitures!!!
I am a Tivo subscriber, and I also receive the "Tivo Newsletter." In the most recent edition, which was sent last week, the following information was included:
But again, as I so boldly teased at the start of this Q&A, that's just the beginning! This fall, we'll be introducing a host of fun, creative, useful and just plain clever broadband features, including:
* Getting select TV shows and programming via broadband to your TiVo® box (Begging
does not become you... I will tell you more when I can!)
* Games, streaming radio, podcasting, and more.
Thus, it appears that they're slating to release it sometime this fall.
TV shows--yes OMG even complete series!!!!--have been available over the net for years:
http://www.thepiratebay.com/
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
It's a process issue. No cause for bitterness. When people realize that they can get a service they want through their computer (a medium that is used as their primary source of communication), then that service will explode as demand increases exponentially. This is a step in a direction that all are hoping... But realize that I am writing this while EXTREMELY drunk, and to avoid tyops it has taken me a long time to write....
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
This is just asking for more DRM and content protection from Hollywood and/or program resellers until we have totally decripled machines everywhere.
I think, it's much safer to just let it be some cheap subscription model and let people watch it on-demand instead of downloading the entire content and have some key to watch it.
The idea is nice, but I know where this is going, and I don't like it. I think, we should do whatever to discourage Hollywood/resellers from growing brain from already tiny head.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
It had better not if Tivo wants to survive as a company.
who said tivo was necessary? it is most definitely, by any definition, a luxury. not to mention tivo was out before xbmc and xbmc is not something you can really compare to tivo.
i tried tivo desktop out, but the files are usually well over a gig for an hour show... is tivo going to pay for all that bandwidth? this is like a windows update size problem to solve.
Tivo could easily start buying up cheap movies and old series for cheap and start offering them. By doing that and buying discontinued tv series they could start to build an on-demand catalogue that would justify non-cable people shelling out for a cheap tivo. I think once they had a sustainable group doing that they could start getting more current content.
I do security
Why would you use wireless if wired was an option. There are plenty of very TiVo compatible 10/100 USB NICs out there.
Why don't they come with 10/100 ports built-in? I'm sure the Series 3 will now that TiVo has released supported features that will support it (up until recently all ethernet based functionality was either a hack or technically unsupported functionality). Fact is TiVo sells the devices at a loss. Adding a 10/100 port would have just meant a larger loss for no gain, since there was no official functionality.
1. with xbox media center on your 2. modded xbox, install this script ooba and then 3. you get access to Comedy Central [and other things].
OK, but you do realize this is a completely irrelevant "counterargument", as TiVo's service will be 1. not require an installation well beyond the average person's capability, 2. run on legal, off-the-shelf hardware, and 3. access content legally?
I mean, come on, the fact that you can buy Roluxes in a back alley in Hong Kong hardly proves that Rolex's business model is fatally flawed!
You can also use TiVo to Go with the Orb free streaming system. Just go to this site to download an add-on to Orb that lets you stream out your TiVo files anywhere you can access http://my.org.com./ You can stream as Windows Media, Real Video or 3G if you're feeling like streaming TiVo to your cell phones. Kinda like a slingbox, but free.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
As a subscriber to what was once considered normal cable I have to ask "how much?" I have a tv card/PVR for recording shows when I'm not home and when I may want to watch them again. I think that makes it legal under fair use because I did the recording myself. There claims that it's slightly less than legal if you're not physically(external drive/DVD-R) obtaining(borrowing) the episodes from someone you know. All the 'on demand' extras have been more expensive than I want to pay and have never bothered to check into it much but it seems to be paying for a subscription to have access to a larger selection of pay-per-view shows. Seems a lot like having to pay at least twice. It's about time they realize that anyone who was going to "pirate" is already doing so, Arrrrg!, and just offer a reasonable price to try to coerce the casual/ non-eye patch wearing "pirates" Yes, This looks just like another corportaion's scheme to squeeze every last penny out of their loyal customers who they see as their mindless herd of cash cows.
Ok, not mindless, just being taking advantage of because they don't know they're being charged a probably very high subscription fee for a DVR/PVR they can purchase as stand-alone hardware.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Accessing comedy central through xbmc is nothing worse than blocking the ads on comedycentral.com when you watch the videos from there. But you're right that XBMC and Tivo are different things. But can you watch Launch videos, watch ifilm, stupid videos, and atom from your tivo? I thought not.
"my point is that you don't tivo for this."
That's sort of like saying "I moved across the street from where I work, therefore nobody actually needs to own a car."
There are a LOT of things not on that list of yours that a lot of people are quite happily watching on their TiVo's right now. It's a pity you can't edit your post to say "Here's an alternative to TiVo, it's up to you if it's good enough."
"Derp de derp."
2. run on legal, off-the-shelf hardware
How is XBMC illegal?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Don't tell anybody, but we've been doing that for a couple of years now. In the beginning it was only geek things, software... farscape etc, now they even have soaps...
;)
Nice that Tivo has caught up...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
The cable networks don't let it happen. The reason you can't download content now is because the cable operators networks to 5 minutes per half hour that they can stream over the internet. (It' has nothing to do with the production companies as mister tinfoil hat said, their content is already sold)
The same issue will affect this route as well. This may launch but there's not going to be much content behind it.
"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to m
Tivo's just thrashing around, trying to find a way to survive. Their original product is cool as hell, but doesn't have sustainable economics. Now they've decided they can enter the online media market with a few tweaks. And so that can -- but so what? It's not new technology, and they're not going to be able to get anything people will pay to see.
I like the Movielink Rental design and think it perfectly suited for tv shows.
The primary reason I would want to download a TV show is because I missed it. Most shows I only want to view once. The autodelete means that the price of the show is less than purchasing a copy of the show.
Quite a few shows are now selling DVDs. So there is the option of purchasing a DVD if you need Buffy the Vampire Slayer in your collection or karate chopping babes.
The biggest problem I have with Movielink for movies is that the download takes too long. I suspect that TV show downloads would be a tad shorter.
The source code to XBMC is presumably not illegal. There's currently no way to legally compile it, however, without paying a license fee to Microsoft. Therefore, almost any binary of XBMC is probably illegal.
Of course, you quoted someone who was talking about legal hardware. At this point in time, I don't know if modding your XBox is illegal, but I can't see how it can be.
Why do the high-tech companies always seem so far behind?
From the article:
No one yet has found a way to overcome the considerable technological hurdles, such as finding a speedy way to pump two-hour movies through broadband,
That's interesting, because it seems like a whole lot of companies have spent a lot of money to make exactly that happen. What are VP7, VC-1, and H.264 but speedy ways to pump two-hour movies through broadband?
Tivo is basically stuck with MPEG-2, and though you can get significantly better quality with modern encoders than you see on DVDs, it still requires a bitrate that is several times higher than modern codecs, for decent quality.
Is there anybody that is really using the latest technology, to get video download services up to reasonable standards?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I work for Charter Communications in St. Louis, MO. How is this any different than VOD (video on demand) provided by Charter...made possible by vod technology and two way addressable systems? Charter on Demand You can order any movie/tv series on our servers. Sounds like Tivo is just trying to provide the same types of services cable companies can already offer people.
The satellite and cable companies are just finally trying to beat Tivo to provide some services to compete with what Tivo's already given people, and managed to use their inherent muscle to provide something Tivo can't for once.
:)
(This from somone who spent 3 hours of rainstorm-ruined DirecTV satellite service this afternoon, who Charter has been promising cable service to for 3 years now in the St. Louis area, but won't pony up to the deal.)
Everyone has a differnet viewpoint, eh? By the way, Busch ditched astroturf a while ago.
Oh, sarcasm. I get it...
Tivo has competition.
? plugin=RSSImport
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_details.php
An RSS plugin to Azureus.
I would love to be able to download what I want. I hate paying for cable television. I only watch 25% of the channels and then probably 25% of those most of the time. I pay $40 a month for nothing. I want a la carte.
For an out of warranty consumer item that you may have paid $500 (box+lifetime sub) for, you were able to get a replacement from the company for just $80?!?
Sounds like a good deal. I would KILL for that kind of replacement policy on anything else.
Tom
Nobody was clever enough to receieve a 5 in this thread. Now I have nothing to read since I only browse at >4
Well, for starters, not everyone wants to run cat5 through a wall or floor so it comes out wherever they happen to have their TV set at in the house. Wireless makes a lot of sense for this type of device.
.. so under $5 for them. If they added $5 to the price to cover that, how much of an issue do you see that being for sales? And these prices have been around quite a while on 10/100 ethernet.... It isn't like this price drop just happened.
And the fact that "all ethernet functionality was a hack or technically unsupported" until recently just illustrates what I'm saying. Tivo didn't go far enough or think far enough ahead with their product, and the "innovations" we're left waiting on are all basic things people *expect* to be in a box of this type already.
Tivo selling the boxes "at a loss" means nothing to me. How much is a 10/100 ethernet adapter these days? I can buy a compete PCI card one for about $7 on Pricewatch. Tivo only needs the chips themselves, since it'll be integrated onto an existing motherboard
Modding your XBox is not intrinsically illegal; you can take out the innards and put it into a new case and nobody can stop you.
When people talk about "modding the XBox" though, they're talking about specific modifications that, among other things, bypass the copyright controls contained in the XBox. This is a violation of the DMCA in the US, quite clear-cut.
While I believe that such controls being on the XBox in the first place is immoral, my personal opinion has little bearing on the legal status, which is quite clear.
So, "modding the XBox" isn't illegal, but "modding the XBox" is. Two different senses of that phrase. Don't let others snow you with the difference; I assure you it won't confuse a judge.
Why in the world didn't these boxes come with wired 10/100 ethernet RJ-45 ports on them? At least in their later revisions....
Because the Series 2 boxes come with a pair of "wired" USB 2.0 ports that you can connect to a wireless 802.11x adapter or to a wired 10/100 adapter. I wouldn't be surprised to see support for at least one gigabit USB 2.0 adapter if this video thing really takes off.
I fail to see how this is TiVo's fault. You refuse to research which 802.11g adapters work with a TiVo, you refuse to use a wired connection with your TiVo, and somehow it's their problem. Do you also believe that 802.11g is actually going to give you a 54 mbps connection? *smirk*
If you want to transfer TV programs, a.k.a. large quantities of data, you use a wired connection. For everything. Period. Otherwise you have no basis for complaining that things are transferring at cable-modem like speeds, because frankly that's all that wirless devices are expected to do in real world performance.
Last night I sat down, scrolled through a list of movies I haven't seen before, and started watching one with my Wife. I didn't Tivo it, and I didn't wait for it to start. On Demand and iControl both offer this kind of service, through Comcast and Time Warner, respectively. Although, I heard On Demand is available through other cable companies, as well, but I could be wrong.
So, what's the difference? The delivery network has little or no effect on the service, so long as you still get to see the movies and shows. Besides, I'd be highly surprised if my On Demand doesn't transfer over IP, anyway. Comcast's cable broadband runs over the same network, and it would make sense if they used the same pipe for all the data.
The only novel thing here is that Tivo is doing it, meaning you can get the service without a cable provider. Also, I would enjoy downloading whole seasons. However, most On Demand television shows cycle through all the episodes, usually keep one to three of them available at a time and moving to the next one every week or so. It's a great way to catch those missed classics and hidden gems.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
2. There are no products available right now that even come close to what the Tivo offers. The highly touted MOXI box has fallen fla with broken season passes and terrible analogue recording, and the other built-it yourself kits use the absolute worst TV Guide data i've ever seen. Sure, eventually someone might make a product as good, but for right now, it's like the iPod. It does one thing, and it does it well enough to stay on top.
3. No one likes integration. Industry has proven that people simply dont like it if their built-in DVD player dies, they have to send their entire TV/VCR in for repairs along with it. Seperare components have been, and will always be top choice for consumers.
4. Tivo has always had mainstream content. They have had movie previews and trailers from every major film maker on their boxes. The studios are just realising how important broadband could be to them. You only need to look at the success of BSG for evidence of this. Now the studios just need to capitalize on it, and Tivo will be an excellent outlet for this.
5. Tivo IS the iPod of the living room. Has been for the past 6 years. Where have you been?
This is seriously disturbing. The difference between the Tivo content and the one posted above is the Tivo content will be LEGIT. Who the hell wants to pay seven grand when the RIAA/MPAA come knocking on your door because you wanted to see the latest episode of CSI that you missed? I dont.
Uh...
The guys at Akimbo have been doing this for almost a year...and have signed contracts with many major media companies.
Thoughts?
Is it really so clear cut? A modchip itself does not allow you to circumvent copyprotection. It does allow you to run unsigned code--it lets you run whatever you want. If you use a hacked bios, it allows for bypassing copy protection. If you use a "legal" bios (Cromwell, for example) it allows you to run unsigned code, but not copied XBox games. I definitely think it's not as clear-cut as you indicate, but maybe my understanding of the DMCA is not as good.
ReplayTV with the p2p Poopli has, for years, let you browse, request, and download TV shows from other ReplayTV owners on the internet. It rules. WHy is Tivo always several years behind?
Da Blog
And you know what? Google's next! *shakes fist threateningly toward Google*
Of course... not all of us live in fascist corporatist countries.
Sadly, the DMCA cares less about what you do than what you might do. Any action that you take that "circumvents a copy protection", which can be reasonably translated into "increasing the set of copy protected things that can be 'played' on the system", is illegal, whether or not you ever actually violate copyright.
Running the XBox Media Center to download Comedy Central shows is a copyright violation. It is a copyright violation not possible with a stock XBox. Therefore, any mod chip that will allow you to perform that action is illegal, regardless of whether you do. The DMCA doesn't care if you're actually copying XBox games; it cares if you've expanded the set of copyright violation you are capable of performing. Running "whatever you want" clearly includes programs that are capable of such things. Very stupid law, as we should just be banning the violations themselves and not the capability, but there it is.
If you're about to say that precisely defining what constitutes a program that is "capable" of copyright violation is inherently fuzzy and most likely impossible, well, you're most likely right, but I can't imagine you winning that one in court, as a judge will tend to use the logic that if Congress passed a law, clearly they intended that law to do something. (That is to say, the argument that a law is meaningless rarely gets far, from what I see; it is an invitation to the judge to try to determine what Congress did mean. Again, pointing out that is not always possible is unlikely to stop them.)
Of course, nobody but a judge with a case in front of them can say how it would go until judgement is rendered; but I'd encourage you to read the law itself, preferably as a hostile judge, not someone looking for four or five words that will vindicate their cause. I'm pretty confident you'll see this is what it says, because the part in question deals entirely with "circumventing protection", protections that clearly work by virtue of the fact that the copyright violations in question aren't possible until after the circumvention. Can you come up with some counterarguments? Sure, you can always counterargue. But you'd get shredded in court, because both the text and "sense" of the law were clearly to allow the enforced existance of something like the XBox which can control the user's "consuming"* experiences.
(*: I hate the word "consuming", but I have not found a suitable verb that people will recognize what I mean. I personally prefer "experiencing", but that's a leap I've historically had a hard time explaining to people.)
Sure, but a modchip itself is useless without a hacked BIOS. Just using a modchip and Cromwell, all you can run is Linux (and now FreeBSD, I guess). With a stock BIOS on the modchip, you can run whatever the XBox itself runs. It's only the modchip+modified bios combination that even allows for copyright infringement. To suggest that adding a single component which /can/ increase copyright violation is asinine, and there are too many examples in the real world which exhibit this behavior yet are completely legal.
/probably/ wouldn't affect Macrovision (although the DMCA has been cited for use in many cases where no copy-protection has been circumvented--see the FedEX furniture case).
Example 1: video capture cards. It's pretty clear that 99% of their purpose is to copy copyrighted material. Perhaps they don't circumvent any copy-protection measures, but this illustrates the concept of an additional piece of hardware that extends (greatly) your copyright violation possibilities.
Example 2: signal correctors. These do allow for the violation of copy protection measures. They can correct the signal imbalance that Macrovision uses to protect analog signals from being copied. And that's the rub, there, I guess. The DMCA ostensibly only covers the digital world, and as such,
So it's a stupid law, we're in agreement there. And it really does seem to depend upon a judge's interpretation as to whether some given modification violates the DMCA. I'll hold on to the hope that, in an individual case, the judge would look at the intentions of the modder, but we can't count on that.
Blah.