Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
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.