ReplayTV May Drop "Commercial Advance"

An anonymous reader writes "Wired News is reporting that the new owners of ReplayTV are considering dropping the Commercial Advance and Send Show options features." I had bad luck with that function chopping out bits of show anyway. Between that and the 30 second skip function, I'm surprised ReplayTV has lasted this long!

Silly.

[grub]

They sell you these products with the promise of watching "TV Your Way" (or whatever their silly tagline was) and pull stunts like this. It's bait-and-switch.

Before the flames begin.

[Mononoke]

You do know that advertising is what pays for TV programming, broadcasting, etc., in the USofA, don't you?

Would you rather have cat^H^H^HTV detector vans running around?

Re:Another crippled product

[mac123]

I must be a bit confused. Which features has Tivo removed from my system?

I can't think of one.

MythTV and Freevo

[jared_hanson]

Software solutions such as MythTV and Freevo (both run on Linux) require fairly hefty hardware to do the encoding of TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc. Then they need to decode it to play it to the screen. Both encoding and decoding is necessary in order to do the time shift.

However, MythTV is leading the charge to offload this processing to the WinTV PVR cards, freeing up the system CPU for other stuff, or just allowing the user to scrape by with minimum requirements. So the feasability is improving quite rapidly right now.

MythTV has also been doing some impressive work on their GUI (check out the screenshots). This was one area I previously thought Freevo had a leg up on, but that advantage is going away.

Links:
MythTV [mythtv.org]
Freevo [sourceforge.net]

Never Happen

[splatter]

I'm surprised ReplayTV has lasted this long!

Yup and I'm never surprised that you continue your crappy yellow journalism!

Face it folks it's not going to happen. There are a lot of consumers out already using the replay that will raise holy hell if they discontinue this function. What they need to do is get off their ass and countersue like the VCR makers did in the 80's since these functions are no different then hitting FF on a VCR.
These suits have no basis or merit. They need to let them run the course, and make the precident so that the product can go back to normal operations.
DP

Re:Why oh why...

[Albert Pussyjuice]

Well, did you read the article? Obviously the new owners of ReplayTV feel that their inclusion of these features helped to incite some anger within major media companies and, because of this, created friction for ReplayTV.

"Hollingsworth added that ReplayTV models selling today still include Commercial Advance and Send Show options, but the company has not made up its mind about including those features in future products.

Two years ago when ReplayTV introduced its 4000 series of digital recorders, those services upset major media players such as Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA) and the TV networks, which filed lawsuits against Sonicblue claiming that ReplayTV violated copyright laws and robbed them of ad revenue."

It's a very bad idea for a company to upset the big boys and this may have been part of the reason that ReplayTV hit the ground hard. So by eliminating these features, you get more support from companies such as Disney and Viacom.

This is why you roll your own PVR.

[IpSo_]

I believe there was a Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago regarding building your own PVR. The majority of the comments seemed say "Why bother, just buy a TIVO/Replay TV, its already done for."

Well, this is why you roll your own. Yes, its a little more work, the cost is pretty much the same, but there is no monthly fee, and features don't get yanked out from under you.

MythTV is absolutely amazing, and its evolving incredibly fast. If your lookinng for a PVR, I recommend giving it a shot.

Re:Before the flames begin.

[kwerle]

Funny how capitalism works. If enough folks skipped ads (not bloody likely), shows/networks would find another way to get funding. Or they would die. Either way is just fine.

TV is bad for your life

[doublem]

My Parents:

Watch TV all the time. Requests to turn the damn thing off are met with a confused gaze.

My Apartment:

TV gets turned on when we have friends over for the purpose of watching a movie, or we're too brain drained to do anything but sit and watch pretty colors. Oh, and when I want to play with my PS2.

How does that impact our lives? I spend most of my time with my friends. A night to myself becomes a rare and cherished thing spent reading a book I've been looking forward to or on a game I haven't played in ages.

My GF and I throw dinner parties, have nights out with friends, spend time talking to each other and interacting as adult human beings.

Hell, I didn't have cable for four years and never missed it.

Although I do admit, the Food Chanel is pretty fun. Of course, my GF and I end up trying a lot of the tings we see on the shows there.

My mother can give a run down of the entire life story of all the characters on "Friends" and "Stargate SG1" (The latter watched not for the content, but for MacGyver's presence.) Her social life consists largely of people from Church, and she doesn't see them very often.

I prefer my life, thank you very much.

And to add a slice of irony, I'll quote a character from a very bad sci-fi show: "We stopped watching movies when we realized that our own lives were far more interesting."

Re:Before the flames begin.

[thatguywhoiam]

You do know that advertising is what pays for TV programming, broadcasting, etc., in the USofA, don't you? Would you rather have cat^H^H^HTV detector vans running around?

Not really, but I don't think that's necessary. Look at HBO's model, or any other specialzied subscription-based channel.

I've been dying to select exactly the cable channels I want for years. It seems vastly preferable - to me, anyways - to pay $40/month for 8-12 channels that I actually like, through and through. Of course the media giants are all-too aware of this; after all, they watch TV too. You can't shovel your pap in with the good stuff if people have the power to only receive the good stuff, and filter out the pap.

As for Replay... these companies have got to stop with the fucking bait-and-switch routine. This is the precise reason I'll never consider a subscription-based PVR. It was too easy to see it coming. It's also too easy to just buy the parts for the computer that I need to make it happen there. (Where it belongs, IMHO.)

Look, I sympathize a bit with the broadcasters, they have some tough questions and sitations to answer. But that's the extent: a bit. I don't care a lot, nor should you. TV will not 'go away' any more than music will. The presupposition that without this one specific economic model for media dissemination, we'll all be without any art whatsoever, is ludicrous.

Re:"Respecting the intent of copyright"?

[CastrTroy]

They should do this for the "intent of copyright" with movies. I would love to be able to watch a movie on TV without all the controversial words and scenes cut out of them.

Tivo and Replay

[BrookHarty]

I have the DSS tivo, very nice as its all digital, no analog saving. Saw that the Replay was onsale at costco, and the slashdot article on copying files to your PC/MAC.

Bought the replay, found out you had to buy a subscription, it wouldnt work without one. (and it was refurbished...)

Hooked it up off the tivo, and the picture quality saving fromt the Tivo to the Replay was not that great. Could of been the Digital->Analog problem, but even my VCR recorded better. But I was able to move the files to the PC or MAC and edit them. But in the end, I didnt want to pay for the subscription, and he quality wasnt as good. Also, it didnt work with my normal DSS box. (the IR didnt control it) So I returned it.

Even thou Tivo doesnt have an option to copy the movies off, the DSS models have a great picture, even better than the normal broadcast quality. Im thinking of getting the series 2 for DSS, could use more HD space also.

BTW, i used the litttle secret code to enable 30 second skip, works great. Only problem tivo has, season pass manager is slow.

Fast Forward?

[mikeboone]

I have not made the move to a PVR, but we use our 9 year old VCR to tape shows and watch later. And guess what, I use the fast forward button to get through the commercials! Perhaps we should remove that button from all remotes.

Crippled? Barely...

[Ezmate]

The real power of TiVo can be found here: -A list of all your recorded programs (just browse through to see what you want to watch) -Program once, record forever (even if the show changes time slots) -Pausing live TV (great for potty breaks & getting a snack - you don't have to wait for a commercial) -Rewinding live TV (Whoa! Was that a boob I just saw?!) -Beautiful & instant Pause -Insanely speedy fast-forward & rewind (60x play speed by default - can be "hacked" to be faster) -Recommended programs that are automatically recorded I have a TiVo & the 30 second skip button is nice (yes it's an easter egg), but the "super-fast-forward" will generally get you through the commercials in 5 seconds (instead of the 2 seconds that it takes to hit the skip button 8 times), and it starts playing the instant you hit the play button. People who make the decision to buy a TiVo based on the 30-second skip button probably don't understand the product. It does so much more... Since I've had TiVo, I watch more television shows than I used to, but I spend less time doing it (i.e. watching American Idol takes 20 minutes instead of 1 hour, most shows only takes 20 minutes instead of 30, you can get right to Dave Letterman's Top Ten List, etc.)

Re:This is why you roll your own PVR.

[Alan Shutko]

and features don't get yanked out from under you

They haven't removed any features. They aren't removing features from existing products. They're considering removing features from new products they might offer.

Why is this controversial?

[rubinson]

I'm a bit confused as to why commercial skip/advance has become so controversial all of a sudden. VCRs have had these features for years: Panasonic [panasonic.com], Sony [sonystyle.com]. So why is this a big deal when it comes to PVRs?

Re:I aggree

[cybermace5]

I don't own a TV, and my parents haven't for about 18 years.

They got out of it around the same time TV began pushing the boundaries of what used to be morally unacceptable. Since then, TV has succeeded in programming a generation into mindless drones. They don't interact with other people, so all their perceptions of morality and acceptable behavior come from the TV. They watch the commercials and buy what they see.

That said, like many things it is the abuse which is harmful. Some people are intelligent enough to judge the content, and have the willpower to get up and turn it off. But a lot of people would have no idea what to do with their time. They have no skills or hobbies, because they have spent all their free time watching canned entertainment and laughing with the fake audience even if they don't get the joke.

Not everything on TV is bad, and certainly there are some fun programs to watch (for example, Junkyard Wars or Battlebots are some pretty fun shows for a bunch of engineering students to watch). But you need to be able to walk up and turn it off. Switch your mind from remote-control to self-control.

I wish there was a version of Quicken that accounted for your time and personal development. It would be interesting to track mental acuity, skillset expansion, energy, and rest levels in response to different activities. You could budget in time for entertainment, working on a hobby, reading a book, and even exercise. Then you could plot a graph and see whether you are a skilled and improving person, or a sad sack sitting on the couch, getting sadder and sackier.

Re:Stop Watching TV

[fendel]

I wish there were a way to filter out the smug, self-righteous "kill your television" evangelists who invade every TV-related thread for the sole purpose of telling us we're wasting our lives.

TV is no more evil than books or movies, and avoiding TV does not make your life inherently better.

Re:TV is bad for your life

[mugnyte]

Kids! Kids! Thats enough. TV or not, people have a right to do what they want with their time. No sense in bragging or taunting.

Remember, for every issue you stand high on, in your moral rightousness, there is another you surely completely fail on.

Consumerism, Fossil Fuels, Recycling, Diet/Weight/Health, Intellectual persuits, Spirituality, World Awareness, Community Participation, Civil Service....on and on

Pick your lifestyle and enjoy it, but certainly don't flaunt it. There are no angels. Claiming the high ground makes one look niave.

mug

ref: "Bowling Alone"

Not the end of the world!

[jbarr]

As a long-time ReplayTV owner (have a model 2001, 2020, and a 5040) for me, this really is no big deal at all.

First off, it only affects the 5000 or newer series. So, two of my three ReplayTV boxes will be unaffected.

Second, some have had great success with Commercial Advance, but I never had much luck, so I never use it.

And third, the Internet File Sharing for me is another non-issue. Given the upstream cap on my Internet connection, show sharing is just plain prohibitive.

Dinally, let's not confuse "Internet File Sharing" with in-house program streaming between ReplayTV boxes on the same LAN. This feature is NOT being removed. This is the one feature for me that makes the 5040 worth it--it lets me seamlessly offload shows using the DVArchive app to my PC where storage is cheap and either stream them back to the ReplayTV box or burn them to DVD.

Re:This is why you roll your own PVR.

[Musashi Miyamoto]

A little more work? Installing a TIVO is absolutely brain dead. Think of this in terms of a non-computer person you know... Maybe your parents.

Tivo has:
- No install of Linux, software, libraries.
- no install of cards
- Customer support if you cant figure out how to plug it into your TV (the truely braindead)
- Comes with all the cables

Some of us are Unix admins at work and can write their own Myth TV if they wanted, but DON'T WANT TO. TV is supposed to be a relaxing veg-your-brain "activity". Most people don't want to have to think about it.

Have you seen the FAQ on Myth TV?
Compare these questions and nswers to the "plug it in" install of Tivo:

I get an error when compiling about 'mkspecs'?
You need to set QTDIR. On Debian, it should be /usr/share/qt. On Mandrake, it should be /usr/lib/qt3

I can't change the channel when watching TV?
Something's wrong with your program database. Did filldata run with no major errors?

When is the last time Tech Support over at Tivo asked a user "Did you make sure that /usr/local/lib is in /etc/ld.so.conf and then re-run ldconfig?"

Re:This is why you roll your own PVR.

[nbvb]

Bless your heart, Sir.

You Get It (tm).

This is why I'm a Sun/HP-UX admin by day, but a DirecTiVo/Mac user at night.

I like things that Just Work (tm).

Re:Before the flames begin.

[rot26]

Sorry, but what exactly is the difference between "what the viewer wants" and "what brings the most eyeballs to the advertisers" ???

HUGE difference, my friend. The simple one-word explanation is demographics

Advertisers don't want the MOST viewers possible, they want the MOST VIEWERS IN THE DESIRED DEMOGRAPHIC. IANAAE, but I believe the hot demo right now is young women. (That's why you and I think Jerry Springer sucks, but it remains popular with advertisers anyway.) If there were a "viewing tax", equally distributed among all age, sex, and income brackets, then demographics would become meaningless, and television producers would cater to viewers, rather than advertisers (when then in turn care about viewers, but only certain ones.)
I am getting crotchety and unreasonable in my old age, and I have gotten to the point that I would rather watch a show about starfish reproductive habits on PBS than something with 2 minutes of ads for ever 3 minutes of content. (e.g. anything on TBS in the evening. Watching the last 30 minutes of any movie on TBS is an exercise in madness because the ration worsens to 4 minutes of ads for every 1 minutes of content.)

Add me to the list of people who wouldn't mind paying a TV tax if it would get rid of the goddam tampon ads.