TiVo To Brick All Remaining UK PVRs On June 1

handelaar writes "Perhaps in order to 'encourage' existing users of UK Tivo units to change their TV service to Virgin Media, pay £149 for a new 'Virgin TiVo' that they won't actually own, plus £34.50 per month in service charges, Tivo is to cancel all EPG data service to all the Tivos still in use in the country — and existing units will become basically nonfunctional at that time. The faithful aren't amused, having stuck by the company for several years, and mostly paying £120 per annum for service until now. 50% of UK residents aren't able to avail of this generous upgrade offer even if they want to — the cable company in question only covers about half the country."

Comments

MythTV + Freeview DVB-T Tuners

[Dr_Barnowl]

It might cost more up front, but in the long run it's much cheaper, and you get to control the recordings.

Although the BBC has been applying to be able to encrypt it's EPG data for HD channels - there was a large fuss made about it at the time but I've heard nothing since, so I presume they are sneaking it in the back door quietly.

Re:MythTV + Freeview DVB-T Tuners

[jonwil]

The BBC is not being evil, its the evil MPAA saying "do this or we wont let you broadcast our content".

The BBC does the bare minimum they are required to by their deals with the big content producers.

Of course what is needed is for the big content producers stop thinking that DRM (especially DRM on free TV broadcasts) will ever stop their content from being pirated (or even do much to slow it down). But there is as much chance of that happening as there is of George Lucas deciding to give Star Wars away for free and uploading copies to YouTube.

Brick?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

What? Something is bricked because it is no longer served programming info now?

This is bad, TIVO sucks, their lifetime subscription doesn't cover the lifetime of the device, etc.

But stop fucking using the term brick unless the device is incapable of powering on.

Re:Brick?

[Spad]

I don't get this, surely it's not hard.

Something is bricked when it is, to all intents and purposes, interchangeable with a brick. Not simply when it doesn't work properly any more or has less functionality.

Re:Brick?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

But stop fucking using the term brick unless the device is incapable of powering on.

You, sir, are correct. From the link in the summary:

Without the program guide data provided by the TiVo service, Series1 boxes will have limited - if any - functionality. They can still be used to view previously recorded programs and, under certain circumstances, may be used to record programs manually.

So they are stopping the service used by the device, limiting it's functionality. It's like owning an intelligent radio, and your favorite station goes off the air. They are do not doing anything to brick the device.

Re:Brick?

[Gaygirlie]

But stop fucking using the term brick unless the device is incapable of powering on.

There are plenty of ways of bricking something and not being able to even power something on is only one of those. Like for example a gaming console: if you hit the power button and it goes on, but nothing else happens, then it clearly is bricked.

Basically bricked means the device no longer useable for the purposes it was actually originally made for and getting it to functional state requires tools not even a regular geek has at his or her disposal. It is not bricked if returning it to functional state is sufficiently doable, or if it doesn't do what you want it to do but still serves the purposes it was sold under.

Re:Brick?

[anomaly256]

Yes. Like how all those users who call their system cases 'hard drives', 'modems' and 'monitors' diluting the meaning of all the terms involved don't in any way cause confusion and misunderstanding amongst support staff and other savvy users by misusing them as such.

I'm sorry but a dynamic meaning is different to outright misuse. And as it stands, something still being usable albeit in a limited fashion is NOT bricked. Bricked can have many shades of meaning but even in the most liberal form, it is misused here plain and clear.

Re:Brick?

[Man Eating Duck]

Basically bricked means the device no longer useable for the purposes it was actually originally made for and getting it to functional state requires tools not even a regular geek has at his or her disposal.

No, I don't agree. I understand that the device will continue to function exactly as if you disconnected its data cable. Bricked would mean that it functions about as well as if you had disconnected its power cable.

The company discontinued a service, this does not mean that people can't switch the device on and use all of its offline functionality, ie it is *not* bricked. If they issued a remote update which erased all firmware with no possibility of recovery, now that would be bricking.

Re:Brick?

[Attila Dimedici]

I would say that your definiton of "bricked" is close. My definition of "bricked" is "the unit in question has the functionality of a brick." It may turn on, but it does nothing useful. If you can recover it without opening the case, you should not use the term "bricked". If someone else can recover it, you may use the term "bricked", but they should not.
In the case of this story on this board, the term "bricked" is completely inappropiate. It seems that you will still be able to manually program these to record programs, you just will no longer receive scheduling data which will allow the unit to automatically record shows for you. Not only that, but I would think that a good portion of slashdot readers would be able to hack one of these to obtain programming data from an alternate source (I'm not familiar enough with Tivos to know how difficult that might be, it may be more difficult than I imagine).

£149?

[Richard_at_work]

Not sure where you get that from, the Virgin V+ HD box is free (well, a once off £50 activation charge) for new customers, and as an existing customer I can get one for £70 including the activation charge.

Plus the "£34.50 per month" includes TV, phone (line rental and a fairly decent call package) and 10MB broadband.

Not saying that what Tivo are doing is acceptable (although they never promised eternal service in the UK, or did they? Since people are paying an annual service charge, I would guess not), but at least get stuff correct before ranting.

Learning experience

[lexcyber]

Maybe they learned from a successful business model from cupertino. Where you lock in, treat everyone like crap and make them pay a premium price is the winning ticket to huge stock price increase.

- Sent from my Iphone

Re:Hmm...

[Jamu]

When they'll remain loyal and pay more than enough to compensate for the ones that leave.

To add some context

[bamf]

Tivo haven't actively sold the boxes in the UK for about 8-9 years now. This isn't a modern service being canned, it's effectively a legacy system.

Boat Anchor Mode

[Dredd13]

When TiVo was first coming out on the scene, there was talk that there was, hidden deep in the code, a "boat-anchor" mode, which Tivo assured the faithful (which at the time were typically bleeding-edge technology hounds) that if TiVo ever went belly-up, their boxes wouldn't be useless, that there was a mode which they could push to all the units that essentially said "We're going off the air now, open yourself up for use however the owner wants", and that it would offer up some alternative options for shoving EPG data into it gathered from other sources.

It seems that maybe this is what TiVo should be doing with these UK Series1 units, even if they're not technically "going off the air".

Re:Boat Anchor Mode

[Adrian Harvey]

See Oztivo where they've hacked the series 1 frimware to get it's updates over the Internet from a community run guide service. I'm in NZ and using the New Zealand variant on an English Series 1 TiVo (the kind we're discussing here) to good effect. TiVo have resisted people doing this in countries where they're selling the guide service - perhaps now is the time for the community to have a go?

DIY replacement data?

[TenMinJoe]

Is the TiVo guide data format understood? The BBC offer free XML listings data for all UK channels (not just BBC channels) - it seems like it should be possible for motivated developers to convert this into usable TiVo format data.

Re:For those who like this sort of thing, this is

[TheRaven64]

TiVo likes having customers, but they've changed their mind as to who their customers are. They no longer focus on direct sales. Instead, they sell boxes to cable and satellite companies, who rebadge them and sell them on. This cuts their supply chain overhead and guarantees large number of sales, so it's more profitable.