A Variation on the DVR, Without Ad Skipping - New York Times

A Variation on the DVR, Without Ad Skipping - New York Times

Funny how they're trying to turn in the ability to fast forward, present in every VCR since the 70s, as a feature that you might want to pay for. This is typical of the big media approach to DRM, conflating it with actual features.

Yesterday's TiVo Investor Call

Yesterday’s TiVo investor call

Finally posted a profit. Pairing with cable companies and giving away free boxes are things they should have been doing all along. Good to hear they’re on it now.

DVR

As Katherine discovered this weekend, Comcast is piloting a TiVo-like Digital Video Recorder (DVR). After digging on their website for a while, she found this page that has lots of info on the service. She called the number and the cable people came the very next day to give them a new box and set up the service. It costs ten dollars a month and seems to be put together pretty well. It isn’t as slick as TiVo, and doens’t offer nearly as many features, but it does seem to let you record two programs at once, or at least record one and watch another, which TiVo won’t do. More importantly, you don’t have to buy the box, which is the one factor that I think may mean that TiVo won’t ever catch on in the wide market. If TiVo would just collude with cable companies and offer their user interface with the company’s cable boxes, coupled with a month’s free service, I don’t think many people would cancel once they got used to the freedom it allows. As is, I’d recommend that people who want to try out the tape-less recording revolution but who don’t want to shell out money for a TiVo should check out the Comcast deal.