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Boxee TV's Unlimited Cloud-based DVR Holds Users Hostage To Monthly Fees
An anonymous reader writes "Boxee has announced the game-changing Boxee TV, offering live streaming TV via two on-board tuners and an industry-first 'No Limit' DVR service that allows users to record as much TV content as they want, and access it from virtually anywhere. The problem is that the unit, which records directly to the cloud, does not allow recording to a local drive, meaning users are stuck with Boxee for as long as they want to access their stored content — potentially hundreds or thousands of hours – to the tune of $14.99 per month until Boxee ups the ante. CEPro.com suggests, 'I suspect Boxee is offering unlimited storage to make users especially beholden to them. The more content you have, the less likely you are to drop the service.'"
Most people have dreadful upload rates anyway ; the asymmetric connections we receive are very much tailored for us to be consumers, not servers.
I'll lay dollars to donuts that it doesn't upload what you record - they just have a master server which records *everything* and your Boxee just sets a row in a database that tells it what you asked it to record. This way they can offer "unlimited" storage - they just retain a single copy of each program that users record, and look to see whether they should offer it to you based on what you "recorded".
No doubt they hope this gets around the legal limitations that have been cropping up recently with other parties offering store-and-forward services.
It forgets to mention why I'm supposed to be outraged, or upset, or concerned, or... feel anything at all about this.
Ok, so Boxee deletes your recording if you stop paying. So what? Who cares? Don't sign up if that bothers you.
Comment of the year