Sony DVR Useless After Rovi Stops TV Guide OnScreen

New submitter speedlaw writes "Rovi has just announced that they are stopping the TV Guide OnScreen service as of April 13th, 2013. This was announced via the service itself. This is an on-air listing service that provides listings over the air, as part of an OTA TV signal. Many devices, notably the Sony HDD 250 and 500 Digital Video Recorders, will no longer function without the clock-set data this stream provides. When other companies decide to stop supporting something, they don't make older systems useless. Worse, Sony never came out with another DVR in the U.S. market. Why do we have to rent them? How do we get Sony or Rovi to provide at least a software patch to set the clock so the DVR can at least retain 1980s VCR functionality? Sony admits there is no fix. A thread on AVS forums has a bunch of information on TV Guide OnScreen. The TV stations who broadcast the data have been ordered by Rovi to disconnect the data inserters and ship them back. I have a TiVo, and yes, I know all about HTPC, but this data stream was 'lifetime listings' like TiVo has 'lifetime listings' — now that Rovi is looking to cut service, my two DVR units are about to become useless."

Comments

What are the channels doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't the channels just broadcast the programme data alongside the actual programming? That's how they do it here, in the DVB-T streams. A full week's worth of programming and programme descriptions, transmitted over the air.

Re:What are the channels doing?

[jonwil]

Thats what happens here in Australia too, the networks broadcast program data over-the-air through the DVB-T streams. How far into the future depends on the network but all of them do it.

Re:What are the channels doing?

[maxwell demon]

Actually the very first VCR my parent's owned got the programming directly from teletext. You could go to the page where the program is listed, select the page, and it would take the data directly from that page and store it (and it even got the correct VPS times that way, in cases they differed from scheduled times). That was before the invention of ShowView, the system which presumably was making programming your VCR so simple. I've never understood why entering a seemingly arbitrary number should be more easy than just selecting directly from the program table. Indeed, that was the easiest to program VCR I've ever come across, and superior to all the systems which came later, without exceptions. And it worked perfectly for more than a decade (apart from a nasty Y2K bug which you had to work around by lying about the year) until the VCR stopped working correctly (and it was not the programming part that failed)

And of course, if the stations had ever stopped to provide programming data over teletext, the VCR had also the option to enter everything manually.

Re:What are the channels doing?

[rworne]

You do not need to wait a couple of years. I purchased a Samsung TV (LN-750B model - although not for the smart TV functions) and they promised all sorts of applets for the TV. Netflix being one of them.

9 months later, a new model comes out and Samsung releases a firmware update for my model. What does it do? Locks the set to the last available firmware and makes it unmodifiable. Then they drop all support.

Netflix never appeared for it either. Better to have an expensive "dumb" TV and a cheap smart box to attach to it.

What do you expect?

[davester666]

Hello...it's Sony. You should be surprised that it worked this long.

Re:What do you expect?

[CodeBuster]

Exactly. It's hard to name another company that treats its customers worse than Sony. Those who buy Sony products have to know that they're going to be screwed sooner or later, it's just part of Sony's corporate DNA to leave their customers holding the bag. They just don't care, so why buy from them? It's like handing your money to the bully and asking for abuse.

Wake up, Federal Trade Commission

[detritus.]

There should be a mandate that if you want to be a dick and no longer choose to support the software of an obsolete product you sold to maintain core functionality, you should forfeit the source code. At the very least, make it legal to reverse engineer and distribute fixes/functionality without fear of retribution. This is going to become much more common in the future unless someone does something.

Re:Wake up, Federal Trade Commission

[Alain Williams]

Yes - I agree, if you don't support it at least make the source code available.

I recently upgraded from CentOS5 to CentOS6. I have a 4 year old Brother printer/scanner, the RPMs for the drivers would not install (wrong [old] version of glibc & similar). Brother tech support tried to be helpful, but no - it was no longer sold and they would not create new RPMs. With a bit of fiddling I was able to get it to work - but a naive user would not have [I am not being rude about some people].

I will never buy a Brother product again - 4 years is not that old for a bit of hardware; if they don't maintain their drivers I will not take the risk of being left with working but unusable hardware; neither will I support a company that leaves its customers in the lurch.

You're in America

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant you just sue them?

Bashing onwards

[Mathness]

Is this meant to be another bash SONY because they are "evil" "article"?

Before you head down that line, note that:

- Rovi (corporation) used to be called Macrovision.
- This is for a (free?) Over The Air service.
- No link to the Rovi announcement or their reasoning.
- Affects any device and service relying on Rovi and their data.

It seems to me this is just another move to get people onto cable where media companies can exert more control over content (and the people watching) and rake in more money.

Re:Bashing onwards

[bfandreas]

Rovi (corporation) used to be called Macrovision.

That snippet alone would have explained about eveything. Why was this omitted in the submission? So basically Sony built a system that relied completely on a service provided by Macrovision and the customers got completely screwed over?

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Surprised for other reasons.

[DavidClarkeHR]

Hello...it's Sony. You should be surprised that it worked this long.

Sometimes it's a good thing when Sony products die. It means they stop spying on you.

Not this one.

[robbak]

From what I read, Sony decided to save pennies by not having a rtc, and relying on the ota signals. So no ota clock signals, no clock, no work.

Re:rms is right

[Onymous Coward]

In particular, this situation indicates why tivoized systems are a bad thing and why the GPLv3 was necessary. Not that this system had GPL'd software in it necessarily, but if it had, it would have needed the updated, v3 license to allow customers to run their own mods to make the hardware work for them.

Oh, wait. Are the Sony HDD 250 and 500 DVR systems digital signature-locked to prevent modified software from operating?

Re:Normal End of Life cycle

[ByteSlicer]

The Mayans even predicted this long time ago: the calendar support will end in 2012...