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TiVo Plans RFID-Aware PVR
Dotnaught writes "New Scientist has spotted a patent application from TiVo that suggests the company is "working on a PVR that will recognise one of several individual users, and respond to their personal preferences." The patent application describes the invention as "a multimedia mobile personalization system provides a remote control that detects a user's electronic tag, e.g. an RFID tag." It also promises personalized viewing at a variety of locations, detailing how TiVo might forward stored shows from home to a TV in a hotel room, for example. It remains to be seen whether hotels will be eager to help TiVo undermine their pay-per-view video revenue."
Embed me please! I want never again to have to manually pay for anything, prove my identity, or set my TiVo to my preferences. Thanks.
You're nothing; like me.
> It remains to be seen whether hotels will be eager to help TiVo undermine their pay-per-view video revenue
I hardly think it would undermine PPV revenue. It would probably enhance it since those that want to see "Debbie Does Whatever" would probably need to do a lot less searching to get to what they want....
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
Surely this will be an additional revenue stream for hotels as they can charge the same as existing PPV to allow hotel TiVO access to external content which is more appealing to the hotel guest?
I can't wait to hear someone rant about how this use of RFID tags will destroy my privacy, and somehow overnight change the world into some Orwellian police state where we're all branded with the RFID tag of the beast on our foreheads...
:)
Anyone?
Game dev and music blog
Who cares about that technology... They can't even get a HD DVR out!
Anyone else think of what would happen if this became a standard feature. Sure it may be nice to not have to touch a single button, but as soon as Hollywood can have a show DRM'd to a specific person rather than a specific machine, don't you think they would.
Tinfoil hats aside, Hollywood dictating per-person DRM doesn't seem to be too big of a jump for me. I certainly can't wait for the day that I can't watch a recorded show just because I wasn't the one to record it. Go tivo!
I highly doubt that this will really come around. Hotels would have to buy a new box to deliver the Tivo shows, and then in turn they would charge you to watch your own content. Would you really pay to watch the shows on your ouwn Tivo? Its easier to bring your tivo on vacation. Or better yet, build a BTV machine and off-load your shows to a laptop or burn it to DVD.
This use of RFID tags will destroy my privacy! You just watch...overnight, we'll have a terrible Orwellian police state where we're all branded with the RFID tag of the beast on our foreheads!
has presented this exact application years ago.
And when 3 or 4 folks are all in the same area with their tags...which one will TiVo choose? "Gee, Mom...I thought it would pull up Home and Garden as well, which of you kids programmed the TiVo to record Playboy all night?"
*sigh*
1) Lack of dual (or more) tuners on standalone models
2) Lack of support for digital channels (a la CableCard)
3) Personalizing "suggestions" on a person basis, instead of a Tivo box basis.
And from what I hear, #1 and #2 are in the works (rumored to come out mid-2006). And this (it sounds like) could be the third.
I've known for awhile that my Tivo will (if "suggestions" are turned on) record shows it thinks I will like. The problem, is if I record my shows, and my wife records her shows, the machine doesn't differentiate between the two, and tries to find "suggestions" that match both hers and my preferences.
And it rarely turns up anything useful.
Really? or it just one of those things that someone in marketting came up with after hearing RFID and found it to be the new tech buzzword?
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
TiVo is trying to make themselves the standard so they can have no competition in the future and own the market.
--
Get your Free MacMini's here
Someone send one of these to Stallman
Actually if they can have one that broadcasts food preferences (I hate onions and pickles) we might be on to something here. I wonder if it is worth some of my privacy to not have to pick off the onions and pickles because I always forget to ask the Wendy's cashier not to put them on? Pretty much applies to all my other food too; just forget adding onions or pickles please.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
With everyone falling all over themselves to make everything we interact with use RFIDs somehow I begin to wonder... If I need one to start my car, one to pay for gas, one to identify me to the door of my house, one for security at work, one for security on the computer at work, one to "authenticate" me to my entertainment devices (how soon do you suppose the *IAA will be trying to use this for some sort of DRM???). How soon will it be before I need some sort of RFID management system built into my clothing to hold all the RFIDs??? They are small, so it doesn't have to be a large piece of clothing. Just something with lots of little pockets or something to hold all the RFIDs. Since you have to have them with you always and don't want them stolen or your life would be ruined, I suggest RFID management underwear.
Alternatively, maybe the answer is a standardized RFID tag for each individual that all the respective devices are taught to recognize when you purchase them? It could be the same tag that is issued to you in your passport. (I know some people would argue that that would open up a huge security hole to your identity, but since when have the RFID sploogers had any reguard for security issues in the technology???)
With all that said, I for one do NOT welcome our new RFID overlords. I prefer to remain interactive with my environment on a physical level thank you very much. I'll leave my geek card at the door...
Gee, all this money for new technology and they can't even get off their weak asses and support macintosh.
...up in all different locations at the most inappropriate times?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
and put them on your keyring.
Essentially they can perform the same function as a key so why not treat them as such.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Ok, while the RFID system is a good idea and the technology has proven it's worth in many applications, is it a good idea to have RFID chips for everything we use in real life?
If we used RFID like this one could forsee:
The toaster that adjusts to your desired level of toast
The fridge that remembers that you like crushed ice instead of cubed
The Tivo that remembers your choices (I know...mentioned in the article)
The Car that remembers your seating positions
The stereo that remembers your station and desired volume
The computer that logs you on as soon as you sit down
The list could go on and on and with each device you need yet another RFID tag. How many of the damn things will we need in the future to go about our daily lives?
I mean it's a good idea and all, but how much will be too much, and how can we rework it so the technology DOESN'T require you to find your RFID tag holder before you go to the can in the morning?
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
I would think that advertizers would love to have this in everyone's living room. Then, for example, the tivo could scan the rfid tags in the kitchen and serve an ad for Hunts ketchup to every pvr that detects Heinz 57 in the fridge.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads; "And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
How does it know it's me? Sure, via RFID, but where is this RFID kept? Do I need to carry around an ID card for my PVR? If so, I'll probably just tape it to the side of the PVR.
My key ring has at least 5 'loyalty' program cards attached already, except they have bar codes instead of RFID. At least with bar codes I can choose to not show them to the cashier when I don't feel like it. I'd have to be a bit more careful with RFID.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Only if we're very, very lucky.
What a wonderful world this would be...
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
Implementation: instead of a simple menu choice, or a remote control button, implement this via a RFID tag. OK, so how stupid can Tivo get?
Dear Tivo: Give us preferences. Keep the RFID tags.
It remains to be seen whether hotels will be eager to help TiVo undermine their pay-per-view video revenue.
Hotels will love it, as long as they get a cut, and as long as it requires no effort on the staff to implement.
The big flaw in this is distribution of the media. Recently I designed a system to distribute movies to a hotel chain using a bittorrent style p2p system, but it depended that the same file being distributed to the entire chain at the same time. If you're sending "personalized" media out on demand you no longer have that economy of scale. It would require a rather gargantuan streaming media infrastructure, and that ain't cheap. Also, depending on the media being distributed, ludicrous amounts of security are required to distribute over the internet. Movie studios in particular are extremely paranoid about their products being transmitted over the wire. Unless there's been a seachange in attitudes recently I can't see them allowing point to point trasnmission of a high quality movie file to some random location on demand.
No more suing entire families. Now broadcasters and the MPAA will know EXACTLY who to sue when you're fast forwarding though commercials, copying movies to your portable player, and other egregious acts of copyright infringement.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I'm assuming the identifier would be tied to CC information for ordering movies, would remove parental locks automatically, would change your favorites, so on, and so on.
Too many questions left unanswered about RFI. We don't even know how secure an RFID system would be.
I don't know of many people that will be all fired up to get RFID tags embedded under their skin. I know I wouldn't. And barring that, physical security would be fairly easy to compromise. And if my kid gets ahold of my tag and orders movies and unlocks the playboy channel, the whole thing is pointless. Not to mention, at some point, even if everyone signed off on getting them implanted, some creative soul will figure out how to duplicate signals. Point is, there are a lot of kinks to work out in the whole RFID stuff before it gets to a point that it makes sense to go to market, or even start designing things like this. Chances are your designs will be out of date by the time they are. Seems to me it would make more sense to embed a biometric(fingerprint) scanner into a remote. I don't know. Perhaps the power consumption would be too much. Maybe someone with a better knowlege of electronics can answer that question.
... what did you expect, something profound?
and all the TVs start playing porn?
"And I saw TIVO coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The TIVO I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave TIVO his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of TIVO seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed TIVO. Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to TIVO, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like TIVO? Who can make war against him?"
that RFID could improve the transfer speed of my TiVo (currently, it takes over 90 minutes to tx a 30 minute show to my PC) Certainly TiVo and the Hotel chains don't expect I'll want to pay to wait for hours before being able to view my custom content...maybe I'll be able to pre-tx the shows we'll want to watch: "No! we are not watching the latest episode, we have to save it for when we're in the hotel" Stove off? check Iron off? check Doors Locked? check Paperboy notified? check TiVo Transferring? doh!
I was thinking along the same lines when I realized this was a PVR and not a DVR.
They're the same thing. It's just because PVR was already trademarked within the same field (Digital Processing Systems' Perception Video Recorder) that TiVo changed the term to DVR.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Don't confuse patent applications with product annoucements. I don't see a product arriving soon that does everything their patent says. Patents are filed to protect intellectual work that may have been performed, but doesn't mean that Tivo will ever ship anything like it is described in the patent. Companies think up great stuff and patent it to protect those intellectual assets - sort of staking a "claim" on the idea. Doesn't mean they plan to develop anything yet.
That would hurt having the tag implanted in your forhead.
The back of the neck would be better.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This cannot be good... Imagine getting the "really cool" cable package and setting Tivo to get all the "ins" and "outs" of your fav shows... Then walking alongside a TV display who just happens to replay all your fav sick-o shows on for all to see... Better yet... go Tivo shopping with mom! Shell be proud.... NOT.
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" -George W. Bush
How the hell is this patentable?