28 October 2004

TiVo lockdown!

There's been more hubbub surrounding TiVo concerning its recent update that will restrict how long you can keep PPV and video-on-demand recordings. First, from my recent, rare purchase of Wired, they had an interview with a TiVo rep providing a half-hearted defense of the changes. Then, from my recent subscription to the PVR Blog feed, they had several entries discussing it.

And today, who else but /. has a lengthy, and interesting, discussion on it. They reference both the Wired article and the PVR blog. Here's a quick breakdown of their collective assessment.

Arguments are great in a survival-of-the-fittest way. Although, as with this /. discussion, there doesn't have to be a strong and weak argument. Sometimes there can be just a bunch of interesting opinions. The TiVo discussion comes down to these opinions:

  1. Restrictions such as this will kill TiVo
  2. Restrictions such as this are cheating the customer
  3. Customers who expect complete freedom are cheating the companies
  4. TiVo is a helpless pawn to the media providers
  5. This is why I use MythTV/FreeVo
  6. MythTV/FreeVo is easier to use than TiVo
  7. TiVo is easier to use than MythTV/FreeVo
  8. I don't use PPV or video-on-demand, so I couldn't give a shit

I'm currently in #8, but I have been tempted to move to #5. The extra features including media integration (video, music, streaming) and network connectivity are compelling. However, a /. poster brought up the point that digital cable is encrypted and cannot be used with MythTV/FreeVo.

Keywords
[ posted by sstrader on 28 October 2004 at 1:04:02 PM in Home Network & Gadgets ]
Comments

You probably know this, but just in case, digital cable is encrypted but it CAN be used with MythTV/FreeVo. You just need a set top box to decrypt the signal to analog. What you cannot do is record HD programming, and you cannot record the digital stream directly, the way DirecTivo does.

True, there's some noise added in the digital->analog->digital compression, but most digital cable channels are overcompressed anyway, so you don't lose much.

I'd like to hear about your experiences with #5. My experience with an early version of MythTV was that it was so difficult getting the drivers working that I was never able to troubleshoot if it was a problem with MythTV or a driver problem. That was before I got my nifty Hauppauge MPEG card, so maybe I'd have better luck now.

Posted by: David at October 28, 2004 6:54 PM

Is this why my new Tivo box was a relative bargain (Series 2, 80 gig, Hughes) at $78.00?

I understand that DirecTV has dumped it's stake in Tivo and is going the proprietary route...I wonder what's going to happen to us 870,000+ Tivo/DirecTV subscribers? I expect the Ultimate TV service to drop at some point in the future (which is a shame since I prefer UTV over Tivo...you just can't buy a UTV settop anymore, except from eBay and the like).

I'm currently #8 myself but if we weren't HBO/Starz/Showtime/TMC/etc./etc./ subscribers, this might be different.

Posted by: Mason at October 28, 2004 10:01 PM
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