This is why I will NEVER buy TiVo

Remember when TiVo was the coolest thing under the sun because it actually "learned" what you liked and recorded stuff for you? It was hyped as the ultimate appliance for a TV viewer - a little box that will save all your shows, and devote it's existence to finding TV that you, the consumer, would actually consider worthy of watching.

But it seems that all of this is just bunch of hype. Apparently TiVo nowadays cares more about the copyright holders than about it's clients. Some poor users just found out that some of the shows aired on popular networks can only be saved for 7 days due to some shady copyright restrictions. Wait... What restrictions? There are no restrictions that prohibit recording TV shows.

Cory Doctorow says it best:

Hey, TiVo: since 1984's Betamax decision, Americans have had the right to record TV shows even if the rightsholder doesn't like the idea. That's straight from the Supreme Court's mouth.

PVRBlog has more info, and screenshots. Note the wording on the TiVo warnings. They tell you that the recording will be deleted because of policy set by copyright holder. Hey, I can make a policy too. Anyone can make their own policy. But policies don't mean anything. No one is allowed to tell me what I can or cannot tape! There is no law anywhere saying that you need to honor any kind of policy set forth by the copyright holder when it comes to TV broadcast. How come everyone else can tape these shows just fine - only TiVo customers are screwed?

This is very short sighted move for TiVo. They are undoubtedly accepting some nice "donation" from the industry in exchange for removing functionality from their product. But guess what? This will make them loose customers! There is no way in hell I would buy a TiVo set after seeing this.

And just imagine how this is going to piss off someone that just came back from a long business trip just to find out that TiVo deleted all the episodes of his favorite show due to some stupid policy.

And I guess this is what the entertainment industry is aiming for. They sure as hell don't want any customer friendly products on the market. They are scared shitless of anything that can make digital recordings. TiVo scares them, so they aim to reduce it's customer base by taking away the most appealing thing about the product - the ability to record and save shows for unlimited period of time.

First you bribe it, then you cripple it, then you wait until it loose all the good customers, then you buy it and finally you run it into the ground. Scary technology eliminated...

Tags: tivo, tivo drm, tivo crippled, tivo evil, drm, evil drm, evil drm tivo, tivo stupidity