TiVo Users Fear Recording Restrictions

[smearbrick1]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/09/22/tivo.copy.restrictions.ap/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Many fans of digital video recorders made by TiVo Inc. are beginning to fear that Hollywood studios will one day reach into their set-top boxes to restrict the way they record and store movies and programs.

Among the functions included in TiVo's latest software upgrade is the ability to allow broadcasters to erase material recorded by TiVo's 3.6 million users after a certain date. That ability was demonstrated recently when some TiVo customers complained on TiVo community sites that episodes of "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" they recorded were "red-flagged" for deletion by the copyright holder.

Some users also were upset that they were prevented from transferring these red-flagged shows to a PC via the TiVoToGo service.

Elliot Sloan, a TiVo spokesman, called the red-flag incident a "glitch" and said it affected only a handful of customers. "It's a non-story," Sloan said.

Nonetheless, skeptics among TiVo users questioned why TiVo would own such a technology unless the company planned to one day use it.

TiVo and other digital video recorders let users skip commercials and jump around a recording quickly. Since TiVo introduced its DVR in the late 1990s, customers have enjoyed the ability to record anything they want, and store it indefinitely.

But last year, TiVo quietly disclosed that it would employ copyright-protection software from Macrovision Corp. for pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs. According to a post on TiVo's Web site, the software allows broadcasters to restrict how long a DVR can save certain recordings or in some cases prevent someone from recording altogether.

"Program providers decide what programs will have Macrovision copy protection," said the TiVo post.

Matt Haughey, creator of PVRblog.com, the Web site where the complaints first appeared, said some fans are overreacting about the red-flag incident. However, he said he is worried that TiVo has handed Hollywood a means to restrict recordings.

"TiVo would be of limited utility in the future if the studios were allowed to do this with regular broadcast content," Haughey said. "This is like cell-phone jammers. What if you couldn't talk on your cell phone? If customers can't do something with their TiVo that they could in the past, they will stop using it."

TiVo is among many platforms that could be transformed by the entertainment industry's demands for tighter copyright controls.

Broadcasters have also tried to force electronics manufacturers to insert a technology known as the broadcast flag into new televisions to prevent programs from being copied or disseminated on the Internet.

The Federal Communications Commission at one point required such piracy preventions, but those rules were blocked in May by a three-judge panel for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Congress may get the last word.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[anubis13]

Elliot Sloan, a TiVo spokesman, called the red-flag incident a "glitch" and said it affected only a handful of customers. "It's a non-story," Sloan said.

That's the biggest line of crap I've ever heard from TiVo. Elliot Sloan is a liar.

[Tom Saurus]

I have this mentality that I like to archive tv and movies to watch later. If I couldn't record stuff to watch later, I would not torture myself by ordering that channel in the first place. Once "Broadcast Flag" comes into being, is the day I cancel all my premiums and wait for DVD's to be affordable.

I also don't buy what Mr. Sloane is saying. I think he is very well aware it isn't a glitch.

[Tidy]

The real question is who cares. Tivo record quality is crap and they record your watching habits and unless you go in and disable it, they set your Tivo to record stuff THEY think you will like. Why bother with Tivo when you can use a TV card in your PC to record television at much higher resolution and even when the broadcast flag goes into effect it should be fairly easy to circumvent.

IMHO Tivo was yet another NON EVENT!

[smearbrick1]

The real question is who cares. Tivo record quality is crap and they record your watching habits and unless you go in and disable it, they set your Tivo to record stuff THEY think you will like. Why bother with Tivo when you can use a TV card in your PC to record television at much higher resolution and even when the broadcast flag goes into effect it should be fairly easy to circumvent.

IMHO Tivo was yet another NON EVENT!

You can avoid all of this by using Dish Network's DVR. There are no subscription fees, no advertisements, and no snooping!!! (no phone lines)

[lumis]

The real question is who cares. Tivo record quality is crap and they record your watching habits and unless you go in and disable it, they set your Tivo to record stuff THEY think you will like. Why bother with Tivo when you can use a TV card in your PC to record television at much higher resolution and even when the broadcast flag goes into effect it should be fairly easy to circumvent.

IMHO Tivo was yet another NON EVENT!

actually, with the tivo a friend of mine uses it actually captures the transport stream, so you're basically just rebroadcasting the stream that comes down from the sattelite.. i'm not sure about the old tivo's though..

and as for it automatically recording stuff they think you'll like, it's called "tivo suggestions", which you can easily turn off.


on a related side note, tonights simpsons "couch joke" was pretty good, they had the little tivo display pop up and it had the option between "delete this recording" & "dont delete", and it deleted it.. funny stuff

[GullyFoyle]

Adding insult to injury
http://boingboing.net/

TiVo breaks devices, then charges you $150 if you don't like the new deal
Earlier this month, TiVo owners discovered that a mandatory, non-optional "update" to their TiVos changed the built-in software so that broadcasters could flag certain shows for automatic deletion and for restriction from use with TiVoToGo.

David Zatz, a TiVo owner, decided to cancel his TiVo service. After all, he'd bought a device that could record all shows, not one that could record all shows save those that some paranoid Hollywood exec, overzealous broadcaster, or fumble-fingered technician gave him permission to record. TiVo had broken his device and he didn't want to keep using it.

But when he looked up canceling his TiVo, he found out that under the terms of his "agreement" with TiVo (e.g., the crap he clicked through when get got set up), he was obliged to pay a $150 "early cancellation" fee.

DRM ass-kissers talk a lot about how DRM is a "contract" -- someone offers you content in exchange for you waiving your rights to record, or time-shift, or format shift, or archive, or use on your Mac, or whatever.

But it's a funny kind of contract that is renegotiated at the whim of one side, who can unilaterally change the deal whenever he feels like it, and which you can't get out of if you decide that the new deal isn't one that you like (of course, every iTunes user whose iTunes tracks have been downgraded by an iTunes patch knows this already -- Apple won't give you back your $0.99 even when they decide to take away some of the value you paid for when you put your money down).

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2005-09/tivo-customers-face-150-cancellation-fee/

[andkiich]

I might be time to go back to the good old VCR or building a PC based TIVO like computer.

[hiptune]

I might be time to go back to the good old VCR or building a PC based TIVO like computer.

That is why I am reading this thread. As Long as I can set a timer on my PC like a VCR, I can live without the tivo computerized sceduale of tivo. I just want quality. And of course a pure and clean recordable analog signal. It's all you need if you have a brain.

[rkr1958]

I might be time to go back to the good old VCR or building a PC based TIVO like computer.

That is why I am reading this thread. As Long as I can set a timer on my PC like a VCR, I can live without the tivo computerized sceduale of tivo. I just want quality. And of course a pure and clean recordable analog signal. It's all you need if you have a brain.

I use my TIVO 90% for timeshifting ... Really ... We have a 4 1/2 year old and the ability to pause and record live TV and watch it after the "distraction" if over is enormous ... For me, TIVO is the greatest thing since slice bread ... For Now at least

[lumis]

You can avoid all of this by using Dish Network's DVR. There are no subscription fees, no advertisements, and no snooping!!! (no phone lines)

there is a DVR service fee of $5/month & there is a phone line on the back you have to keep connected to the DVR or they'll charge you $5/month.

[tonemgub]

You can avoid all of this by using Dish Network's DVR. There are no subscription fees, no advertisements, and no snooping!!! (no phone lines)

there is a DVR service fee of $5/month & there is a phone line on the back you have to keep connected to the DVR or they'll charge you $5/month.

No charge for 501, 508, 721, models. No phone line necessary for these models either.

[Boondock]

can you not just get the dvr from your cable company? i don;t understand why people pay for tivo.
i have a duel tuner dvd from my digital cable provider. i got it free for 6 months not it is $5 per month. i can watch 1 show and record another on a different channel or turn the tv off and record 2 different shows at the same time. is till have the pause and rewind features. it requires no phone line. i have like 50 hours worth of record time i think. if i order ppv or on demand i can record that. it is very cheap and very reliable. there are usb ports on the front and back of the box but the techs say they are not active yet but should be in the first quarter of 06. then i will be able to record a show and then transfer it to my oc hard drive via usb port. really blows tivo away if you ask me. it's cheap and easy.

[GullyFoyle]

I agree Cableco's dvr is excellent. I can record two programs and watch a recorded one at the same time. I can record HD as well.
And on demand is excellent.
Right now the cableco offers the best deal not only for television but broadband and digital phone.

[BJ_M]

no problems with my two SA 8300HD PVR's .. record two hd shows at once and watch a third per unit ... jump per minute FF and RW , SD to HD upconversion and now just to figure out how to enable the firewire output ....

[isco90]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/09/22/tivo.copy.restrictions.ap/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Many fans of digital video recorders made by TiVo Inc. are beginning to fear that Hollywood studios will one day reach into their set-top boxes to restrict the way they record and store movies and programs.

Copy protection of some kind seems to be broadcasted on some tv shows and not on others ..I have a R10 directv digital satellite recorder (DSR) with built in tivo ..The picture is supurb ..The tv shows are caputured, already compressed by directv, directly to the r10's hard drive and later thru a sima ct-200 to a JVC DR-MH30 to be recorded on a dvd-rw in the video mode ..The tv shows record fine, but half of the cannot be ripped to a pc hard drive ..This leads me to believe we are being restricted by the tv stations on what we can record and not.