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Hollywood Continues Its Attack On Consumers

bizofshowbiz.com — Hollywood is increasingly using one old technique that industries that can no longer compete do: they get laws passed to stifle the competition. In this case I'm talking about TiVo's (TIVO) new Series3 HD model. It does have one strength that TV watchers will really like - the ability to record high definition programs. Now the bad news ...

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  • greymaxcat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Hollywood Continues Its Attack On Consumers... by releasing another Jessica Simpson movie....
    • ProximaC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Full Frontal Assault...
    • lava, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Hollywood continues it's attack on consumers... and I continue not caring because I get everything off bittorrent.

      All this talk about DRM, and it hasn't affected me one bit since Napster came out. As long as information is digitized, it will be copied, whether it has DRM or not. So why bother? They should just try something else. I wouldn't mind if my download of the daily show came with ads.

      Doesn't it feel like DRM is like the lottery? A tax on dumb people?
    • EdLesMann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Doesn't it feel like DRM is like the lottery? A tax on dumb people?"

      I would not say dumb people, rather honest people.

      If you download the media or if you make a purchase and strip out the DRM then you are free to do with the media whatever you want. You have the power to enjoy the entertainment how you see fit, make backup copies, and create new content with it.

      If you buy the media legally, and you abide within the legal restraints then there is no freedom and its very difficult to use. Its hard to be entertained because you can not do anything with it.

      DRM is the natzi prison camp for the honest man (/woman/child/beast/whatever).
    • rouben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To all the people not caring about this because you use BitTorrent: don't be so shortsighted.

      First of all, just because you aren't directly affected by this problem, doesn't mean that it should be ignored. Ignorance is just stupid on your part, I'm sorry, there's no other way to put this.

      Secondly, wouldn't it be better if you could get high quality versions of all the stuff you get *illegally* off BitTorrent from the official channels? Let's face it: 90% of the TV rips on BitTorrent are of lousy quality, much worse than DVDs. Just because the resolution is the same or close doesn't mean the picture is good, even if the compression artifacts are minimal, the colours can be off on TV rips. And I'm not even talking about comparing BitTorrent materials to professionally produced HD content. There's simply no comparison.

      So bite your tongue, and educate yourself. The problem is there, and it's not getting any better. And the silly part is, it already happened before, when VCRs came out.
  • oxyrubber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So let me get this right... A new generation of TiVo is coming out... but it has DRM. Go figure.

    I'm not even sure this is DRM... more like TiVo simply can't get approval to implement the copying/storing technology.

    TiVoToGo is a dream - it is a direct threat to Hollywood (and the networks) who are already big into federal lobbying. Cutting-edge consumers weren't the only ones stifled by the DCMA - so was TiVo and like-minded companies who want to bring creative, feature-filled products to the home.

    All laws that are as broad as the DCMA should be nullified on principle.
    • blapierre, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6MythTV + pcHDTV card ftw!
    • Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2MythTV does not work with CableCard. TiVo Series3 does.
  • scotus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i wish other reports, like the review in the ny times among others who reported on the series 3, had mentioned that it's not tivo's fault that tivo2go is gone from the series 3, but that tivo actually had to ask permission to implement something useful on their own hardware. what a horrible law and horrible result for consumers.

    hollywood finally wants to go digital, but only on their terms. you can buy stuff from itunes but not record and move around what you already played for.
  • FatherG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Meanwhile on the other side of the planet a Japanese company will create a device that /will/ be able to record HD content and stream/encode it to another device. All you need to do is look at the difference between US cell phones and those in Asia/Europe to see the writing on the wall.
  • pauleku, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ahh the way of big buisness - if you cant succeed, bitch and moan and overthrow the competition.
  • SoxFanNH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Or just get a TV card for you PC and record it and store in Divx, easy to do and no dumbass DRM
  • angelp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IMO, Hollywood (DMCA) made the HD TiVo extremely unattractive compared to my cable companies crappy HD DVR. At least with that, if I felt like it, I could hook up my Mac Mini to get the content off and it only costs me $9 a month and zero upfront costs.
  • phlll, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Stuff like this is making me less and less reliant on television. Why pay $1k+ for an HDTV and $800 for a "useless" TiVo? Put your money in other entertainment (or something that draws interest) and consider abandoning TV forever.

    Webcasting is where it will soon be at, anyway.
  • lbytesxk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Tivo2Go has no restrictions with series2 non-HD Tivo's. Why?
    Becasue the series 2 Tivo does a number on the picture quality and the outcome is something closely resembles to VHS. Now I haven't seen the new series 3 Tivo picture but if the encryption/compression is based on the same algorhytm as the series 2 Tivo (which I own) the HD signal probably looks like the regular cable signal after Tivo is done with it. Having said that the convenience of the Tivo and the ability to say bye bye to stupid commercials are alone well worth the price of the series 2 Tivo but not so much the $800 they want for the HD version.
  • meccaneko, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0So from my understanding of the article, the TiVo will still be able to record HDTV to it's internal storage, which is what it was originally meant to do. This TiVoToGo thing was just an extra bonus feature added later. I guess as much as it pains me, I agree for a change with what they are doing here.

    Why should they allow people to make their own personal recordings of HDTV content for archival purposes? Either watch it while it's still on your TiVo or rent/buy it on DVD...
    • angelp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Are you serious? Why is it okay to do it with the S2 and not the S3?

      Plus, if you're familiar with recording HD, it takes up a large amount of space. With the capability of recording two shows at once, you're able to record a lot more content and you'll quickly run out of space. I'm constantly managing space on my HD DVR because I run out of room before I'm able to watch everything (especially when recording sports events). The whole point of a DVR is to watch programming at your leisure. Why shouldn't consumers be allowed to offload that to an external hard drive to watch later or to watch on the road?
  • sdo1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Repeat after me... ALL DRM IS BAD. Period. There's no "kind of OK" DRM. It is ALL designed to restrict what you can and can do with media that you have rightfuly and legally acquired. I hear all the time people saying that the itunes DRM is OK because it doesn't really restrict the things they want to do. How on earth do you know what you'll want to do years from now? Maybe you'll want to re-sell it? Can't. Maybe you'll want to stream it to your living room on a device like a Roku? Can't.

    The best thing people can do is to reject it all. Don't buy itunes music. Don't buy HDDVD. Don't buy BluRay. Heck, the only reason I actually still buy DVDs is because the DRM is trivial to break so I can put the content on a media server or shrink it to put on my ipod (note... you can have a completely DRM-less ipod).
    • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Repeat after me ALL DRM IS BAD.

      DVD has DRM. If HD-DVD is bad, and BluRay is bad, then DVD is bad.

      It is against the law to read a DVD to your hard drive so you can play it later on a trip without carrying the DVD with you. It is illegal to do so so you can transfer it to your iPod (or whatever).

      ALL DRM IS BAD. It is partly the success of DVD that has given Hollywod the idea they can successfully sell DRMed content/media to people. If you continue to support DRM through DVD, it will only encourage Hollywood to keep making other DRM content until they finally make the one you can't figure out how to break.

      I have a DRM-free iPod. I buy DVDs (rarely now). But I don't kid myself that there is any actual distinction between DVDs and BluRay or HD-DVD. Either way, you're teaching someone in Hollywood that they can forgo releasing content in a freely convertible format and instead only offer it with DRM.
  • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Inaccurate.

    Dropping TiVo2Go was required to get CableCARD certification. That certification comes from CableLabs, which is run by the cable companies.

    There's no DMCA involved, just the rules enforced by a consortium of cable companies.

    Marked as inaccurate.
  • nitrusoxide13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use Tivo2Go to transfer shows to my PSP because I want to watch on my train ride home. I don't think anyone (except maybe Sony and their useless UMD format) is losing money because I do this. If I didn't watch on the train, my TiVo would get backed up and I would never watch the shows. How is watching them on a computer, PSP, laptop worse than not watching at all? At least I see their damn commercials...at 3x speed.
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