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New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities
Lauren Weinstein writes "The rapid deployment of Switched Digital Video (SDV) by cable companies can cause major problems for buyers of the new HD TiVo, preventing any access to some channels."
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Come on you know you NEED cable and HD and everything else they sell. I've come to the realization that nothing on TV is worth what is being charged. I just dropped all my HBOs, Showtimes, digital cable, boxes, etc. for plain old standard cable (76 channels at a rip off price of $50).
The funny thing is the lady on the phone kept saying she didn't understand why I didn't want all this great stuff.
No doubt there will be countless "TiVo Sucks" comments. Usually by people who believe that building their own MythTV box (costing more than the price of an HD TiVo and 3 years of service) is better than paying a monthly or annual subscription to TiVo.
Here's the rub. TiVo is powered by Linux. Every time you tell someone to build a MythTV instead of buying a TiVo, you're re-enforcing the argument that companies cannot be successful and use open source software. That's right. You always sit there as armchair CEO's and wax poetic about how running or selling open source software can be profitable... that companies can have a successful business model by selling services (i.e. Redhat). And yet when a company comes along with a service plan, using Linux as their OS, and selling an awesome product... you say that only a fool would pay subscription fees and try to spin your own.
Thanks a lot folks.
It's not a public utility, it's not using public property like the phone company
Really? Do you have some sort of fancy cable-less cable company that doesn't rely on public rights-of-way and utility easements to get its product to its customers?
Thanks to all of you who are cutting edge, purchasing all these incompatible devices under the spectre of still-evolving standards. When I, and the rest of the world, follow in your footsteps three years from now, the process will be smooth and error-free because of your trials and tribulations.
Seriously, I'm grateful for you guys. You take it on the chin so we don't have to.
Nothing new to see here. SDV has been a problem for 3rd party cable hardware from the get-go. Tivo owners have been in this mess since the Series 3 was released A YEAR AGO. The only thing that's changed is the price for the Tivo HD... it's now cheap enough for some of the village idiots to aford one.
As for the BS comments w.r.t. cablecard requirements... SDV isn't part of those requirements. And wouldn't matter if it did. All the products on the market (and there are things other than tivo's that cannot support SDV, btw) are UNIDIRECTIONAL devices. There are no certification paths for bidirectional devices. (partly because there's no set standard because the cable companies keep changing their mind.) SDV is 100% unnecessary. Cable companies have plenty of capacity if they drop analog cable entirely or even start using the parts that no longer carry stations. (TW/Raleigh has room for ~40 HD stations above the analog broadcasts. That number goes up every year as they reduce the analog tier.)
The reason SDV exists -- and, btw, it was created by Time Warner and Scientific Atlanta -- is to subvert the cablecard mandate and attempt to push back the "integration ban" that took effect (finally) July 1. It's the difference between "spirit" and "letter". However, as SDV is linked in the UDCP license, there may yet be a loophole to their loophole. But I'm pretty sure no cableco will go along with it -- they're doing a bang up job keeping cablecards from working properly in the first place.