A TiVo Series Three Receiver was on my shopping list for this Christmas season. I have been watching the reviews of the unit and the new C|Net review of the Series III that I saw today makes me wonder if I should take the unit off my wish list.
We all have learned to hate DRM, and we all hate devices that are overzealous in enforcing DRM. It seems TiVo has got DRM fever and is running scared from the studio’s. Additionally I am not real happy with devices that make you revert to old school techniques to archive programming. Check out these two depressing quotes from the review.
“the only way to archive your TiVo Series3 recordings is the old-fashioned way: dump them to a video recorder in real time.”
“Once again, though, overzealous copy protection has taken something simple and turned it into a Sisyphean ordeal. All we wanted to do was watch TV, and connect our gear with a minimum of cables and wires. Thanks to DRM, that simple task becomes more difficult all the time.”
Once you read the linked review and determin where they had specific hardware connectivity issues you may be inclined as I am to not to move forward with a purchase of this unit. I have said it once and I will say it again because it is worth repeating. The manufactures and their willingness to roll over on consumers will be the ultimate demise of fair use. They will wait till our legacy systems wear out and then kill functionality with new products.
It is obvious that DRM is halting innovation and the ability to re-utilize media that is legally yours to record and enjoy. [Cnet.com]
Tivo has it all backwards. Their customers are the people who pay monthly fees and upfront fees for their services, not the content providers who do neither.
Trying to stay in the good graces of someone who will never pay you while taking a big healthy you-know-what on the people who you depend on for your ecenonic survival is poor business.
The **AA’s have so many people running scared it’s pathetic.