TiVo User's Fears Explored

elrous0 writes "In spite of TiVo's continuing insistence that recent appearances of 'red flag' recordings are mere "glitches," the AP is reporting that customers are beginning to get nervous about the new content-blocking feature added in a recent TiVo upgrade. The story quotes Matt Haughey, of PVRblog.com, as saying 'TiVo would be of limited utility in the future if the studios were allowed to do this with regular broadcast content ... This is like cell-phone jammers. What if you couldn't talk on your cell phone? If customers can't do something with their TiVo that they could in the past, they will stop using it.'" We've touched on this topic in the past.

Comments

their fears are well founded

[Surt]

TiVo has caved into the content producers, and handed over control of the DRM process to them. The recent accidental flagging of content in this way proves it is out of TiVo's hands, and within the realm of control of the broadcaster. That makes it only a matter of time before broadcasters will begin to use this feature. If TiVo wants to retain loyal customers, they need to take back control: they should require digital authorization codes for DRM features and DRM the DRM so that only TiVo can authorize DRM restrictions on content. Unfortunatley, even then TiVo users will have to worry about whether TiVo will allow DRM on content only in reasonable situations, or if TiVo will cave into monetary or legal pressures and allow it on anything the broadcasters want.

The end of TiVo's usefullness is approaching quickly. Probably time to get some more developers working on the open source alternatives.

Why?

[Str8Dog]

Exactly why is TiVo adding this functionality? I cannot for the life of me figure it out. Is there a law somewhere that says they must? Or are they just afraid of the cost of a legal battle with the **AAs? Are the media companies so powerful now that they can impose thier will with just the treat of a lawsuit?

I don't get it

[scorp1us]

I have watched and laughed as Tivo has bent over and taken everything from the industry. I am both a ReplayTV and MythTV owner. I don't understand why or how Tivo does what they do. If I bought a box with functionality X,Y,Z, and later Y is ammended in a way that causes some controversy (in a way I do not like), then I think Tivo has broken a contract.

Throughout it all, my ReplayTV experience has gone un-touched, I still have commercial skipping and the like. The way Replay skirts the issue is that they change model numbers and can then change the feature set. My 4500 has commercial skip where the 5500 does not. How Tivo is legally able to change it on all models is beyond me.

Got rid of my TiVo, using BTV

[ratajik]

I cancelled my TiVo subscription 4 days ago - I'm now using BeyondTV. I had the original model of the TiVo, and have been paying the monthly on it since TiVo first came out (yeah, I know, in hindsight I should have bought the lifetime subscription). I loved my TiVo - it really changed how I watched TV. But what I wanted in a DVR is something that records TV, keeps it until I tell it to get rid of it, etc.

The TiVo rep argued with me that they had "resolved" the problems with shows getting deleted. I understand that it wasn't intentionally turned on, but the fact is the device now supports and allows broadcasts to muck around with this kind of thing. They offered to knock the monthly down 1/2, but I'm not interested any more.

I don't like the direction the company is heading in, so I've switched. I'm not going back, unless there's a radically change in their direction - and even then I'm no likely to. I like having control over my DVR - dual headed, 1TB storage, DVD burner, can ADD shows to the machine (and get them off), and I can extend and expand that machine as I see fit.

Long live BTV! :)

-Greg

If you buy something because of promised features

[artifex2004]

and later the company takes away some of that capability, do you have some legal basis for claiming false advertising, or reneging on contract, or something like that?

I think this would be more of a question for people who paid for a lifetime subscription, but it also throws into the question the value of any future lifetime subscriptions, because if their contract allows them to start adding restrictions after the fact, is it really of much value?

Perhaps a similar question could have been first pursued back when the company started venturing into adding advertising into the skip features, etc., as well.

Re:I've already gotten rid of my TIVO.

[kabz]

People are going to start *caring* very very quickly as soon as programs start expiring automatically and can't be saved.

If I was TIVO, I'm not sure I would have made the entire screen red. That's really going to upset people. Maybe this will become the 'RED SCREEN OF DEATH' for TiVO.

Re:DRM is the issue, not TiVo

[squiggleslash]

Unfortunately, you're probably wrong. The Betamax decision stated:

In summary, those findings reveal that the average member of the public uses a VTR principally to record a program he cannot view as it is being televised and then to watch it once at a later time. This practice, known as "time-shifting," enlarges the television viewing audience. For that reason, a significant amount of television programming may be used in this manner without objection from the owners of the copyrights on the programs. For the same reason, even the two respondents in this case, who do assert objections to time-shifting in this litigation, were unable to prove that the practice has impaired the commercial value of their copyrights or has created any likelihood of future harm.

In other words: unlimited time shifting and space shifting was fine in 1984 because it didn't encroach upon content producer's ability to make money from their products. Not only that, but some content producers didn't object to time shifting, therefore Sony making a generic product that did that was legal because there were clearly legal uses.

Roll forward to today, and things have changed fairly radically. The technology exists now to stream individual video programs. DVD sales now encompass all types of visual content. Cable companies make money from "video on demand". Further, it is easy to create, as TiVo has, restrictions that take into account cooperating content producer's wishes. As such, a generic device that just space shifts and time shifts could concievably reduce the commercial value of a product.

For example: I might be tempted to buy, on DVD, the complete season of "One Day To Defeat The Terrorists By Whispering Everything", the new hit Fox show, if I missed various episodes. Fox might release the DVD set with that in mind. However, if one can simply program their DVR to record every single show, they're not likely to buy it, especially if they can transfer the show to tape or DVD-R afterwards. Thus, one of the measures SCOTUS used in making the Betamax decision simply isn't true any more, as technology has improved.

Whether Betamax would get overturned is something for the lawyers to answer. But if I were TiVo, I wouldn't rely upon the Betamax decision to protect myself from potential copyright violation suits, especially in an environment in which other technologies which have tried to rely upon the space-shifting and "Substantially legal uses" defenses, such as Peer to Peer networks, have currently not won the support of the courts. Specifically, the supreme court's ruling has been over-simplified by many of its enthusiasts: it wasn't "Time and space shifting are human rights, man!", it was "Because there's no way today, in 1984, that this technology could reduce revenues for content producers, amongst other things, it's fair use, right now."

What we actually need, rather than this rather shakey Supreme Court ruling, is actual legislation that enshrines certain things people do with content into law. Of course, with half the advocates of this type of thing thinking that copying someone else's song to millions of anonymous strangers is "Fair use", it's going to be hard getting a consensus on what those rights should be, and to ensure Congress actually has something legitimate that doesn't actively damage artists at the end of the process.

Re:Well that answers that

[kesuki]

For that solution I'd recommend going with the semptron getting a barton core athlon XP would have a slight edge in performance, but for a DVR the semptron should be plenty fast, and can be had real cheap :) 512M ram, a 300-320 gig HD, and a DVD-burner and you've got a pretty nice PVR, throw a PSX style controller USB device and you've got a kick ass emulator station too ;) and the total hardware costs should be right around $500.

but really many slashdotters will have a Pc of that generation lying around. all you need is the capture card, and a big HD...

Maybe off topic & Karma Suicide

[Brass Cannon]

I use a MythTV box that a friend programmed for me. I love it but it is essentially a black box to me (literally) because I am not a programmer.

I am trying to resolve what seems like a contradiction.

1 - open source software is constantly (on Slashdot) said to be the way to go.

2 - TiVo has an interface that appears to be an order of magnitude better than Myth

This seems like a contradiction in my mind.

If Myth is open source and so many people are improving it and making feature additions then how come the average fairly intelligent person (I am an engineer) can't, with a minimum of fuss, install the software, have it find the installed hardware and configure itself accordingly?

Myth is great because it's independent & free of restrictions. It does not seem up to par on some things you would expect to do easily (watch a DVD, Archive to DVD, program on screen, for which I use the mythweb function almost exclusively). This is my first experience with open source and it seems like it's not yet ready for prime time.