Forced TiVo Ads

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/11/26/tivo.surrender.ap/index.html


"TiVo officials say that starting in March users will begin to see static images, such as a company logo, appear on their television screens as they fast-forward through commercials"

Why does this matter ? Because one of the selling points of TiVo was that you could skip commercials. Now it apears that you cannot. Naughty naughty cable providers.

"For some ads, viewers could choose to provide advertisers with their contact data so they can get more direct marketing"

And you think people are actually going to do that in this day and age ? Yeah , right.

"Macrovision has developed a feature that will allow content providers -- the people who produce television shows -- to place restrictions on how long a digital video recorder such as TiVo can save certain kinds of programming. For instance, movies could disappear after seven days."

Oh oh , wasn't TiVo advertising that you can record your movies any time ? And keep them permanently ? ho ho ho !

"TiVo has to become more advertising-friendly because, at the end of the day, TV runs on advertising dollars and companies that are part of that food chain have to acknowledge that, said Tim Maleeny, director of strategy at Publicis & Hal Riney, a San Francisco-based advertising firm.

Josh Bernoff, analyst at Forrester Research, said, Any product that's part of a cable and satellite world has to obey some of the restrictions that go with it."

Excuse me buddy. Cable TV isn't free. I you pay for it. Tossing in commercials on top of that is just plain extortion. That would be why I stopped watching cable a long time ago. :)

"Hollywood studios sued TiVo's rival, DVR pioneer ReplayTV, over its automatic commercial-skipping recording feature -- a function TiVo and other DVR makers could have adopted but didn't."

Don't you love big business ? I don't. These people are just plain rip off artists.

To all the wonderful people out there in blogger reader land, I gotta tell you what I do. I don't watch cable tv. Instead I buy DVD's. I have a nice collection. Over 120 now. All first run movies, and I'm constantly hitting the video store to buy new ones when they come out. The ones I like only cost 20$-25$ each , and if I'm lucky they come out twice a month. If I"m not lucky , I go a month or two with no new ones, simply because the ones that do come out just plain suck.

This is cheaper than the 100$ / month they're charging for cable television up here in beautiful ottawa. And it really does have that anywhere, any time , no comercials , fast forward or pause any time you like. You can't record the movies, but who cares ? You have the copy in hand already ! And you paid for it legit so no one gonna harrass you about any kind of digital rights nonsense.

And there is one more thing you have to deal with. This Hour Has 22 minutes. It's a comedy show up here on the TV , who's title is a complaint that on television , you really only see 22 minutes of show in an hour. The other 38 are all advertising.

People who dance around with the cable tv companies ... just don't know how to add up the costs. It's really just that simple.