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The Secret Origins of TiVo
Davis Freeberg writes "TiVo is probably better known for their ad zapping technology than their television advertisements. In fact, other then a few lousy infomercials and a commercial that was rumored to be banned by the networks, TiVo has never really had much in the way of TV advertisements. Apparently though, one of TiVo's more rabid fans did some sleuthing and discovered a hidden easter egg video buried deep within TiVo's own website. The video itself exposes the true origins of TiVo's technology and how they got their hands on that ad zapping photon remote to begin with."
Great spoof - The file timestamp is actually a GIF =). Makes me wonder what this was meant to promote, or perhaps just a good piece of viral marketing. According to some of those rabid Tivo fans, "Bluemoon" was the codename for the original Tivo iteration.
In order to prevent a massive lawsuite storm from all the major networks, TiVo officially only allows you to fast-forward through commercials, not skip them (similar to using a VCR). Unofficially there is a feature you can enable through the remote (hitting a combo of buttons) that allows you to change the 'skip-to-the-end' button into a 30 second skip ahead button. Most of the time you only have to hit it 3-4 times to get through commercial breaks. But that's unofficial ;)
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Enjoy!
http://www.qcs-rf.com/slashdot/bluemoon.mp4
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Don't bother discussing any implications or great ramifications, it's just another viral ad.
It's on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsXUPmWAfhY
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
What about YouTube? TiVo Bluemoon Video posted by (Dave Zatz
Aren't viral marketing ads supposed to be, you know, entertaining? I watched it on youtube and it wasn't funny at all. If it wasn't for the slashvertisement posting of this video, I would never have seen it - people only send viral videos around to their friends if they are actually enjoyable to watch. This was just stupid, long, drawn-out, and boring.
Latching onto your comment for page position. Sorry.
Mirror1: http://www.qcs-rf.com/slashdot/bluemoon.mp4 (faster than the original site)
Mirror2: http://wakkah.net/pub/bluemoon.mp4 (uploading as I post)
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsXUPmWAfhY
Posting AC for no karma whoring
http://www.mirrordot.com/media/ccbff8e5d33f5022937 f6bdafcc7ae89/bluemoon.mp4
http://bittornado.com/torrents/bluemoon.mp4.torren t
My ReplayTV box has a "commercial detection" feature that is pretty good at skipping commercials without any user intervention. They took it out of later models under pressure from the "entertainment" industry but at least they don't use software update to take features away from existing units the way Tivo does. Don't you love having features you bought and paid for disabled?
"I forgot my mantra."
In order to prevent a massive lawsuite storm from all the major networks, TiVo officially only allows you to fast-forward through commercials, not skip them
Or you can just use MythTV, where you can automatically skip them without pressing anything.
My Dish Network 625, which supposedly, according to TiVo advocates, is nothing more than a poor rip-off of TiVo's totally original wouldn't-have-been-invented-anyway technology does, in fact, have a commercial skip feature, which doesn't require any registry hacks (or secret key presses) to enable.
I'm kind of baffled by it. Why aren't the networks pissed at Dish Network? How is TiVo way better than Dish as TiVo advocates claim? I wonder if the "secret" commercial skip thing is itself viral marketing (Where's the fun in talking about a normal feature? A feature that's hidden because "The Man" doesn't want you to have it, on the other hand, is worth sharing with your friends...)?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Funny, I've had TiVo over 4.5 years and I don't recall ever losing any features in an update. More urban legends. Quite the contrary, my units keep getting new features.
Yeah, that was one of TiVo's earliest TV spots. One of the guys was Joe Montana and the guy with the itch was Ronnie Lott - both retired from the SF 49ers.
Now that really depends what you mean by 'beat' TiVo. Will it have larger storage? Probably. Will it be able to convert to multiple video codecs? Probably not (not enough CPU power). Record multiple shows at once? Definately not (won't get two good TV cards in a $500 price cap). In the end, if you built a $500 MythTV box you'll get something more on par with TiVo, but with a significantly harder setup, less useful interface, and not many extra features. However, dump $1k+ into a MythTV box, and you get a laundry list of neat features that TiVo just can't touch. But I'll stick with TiVo until then.
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