Hollywood and NFL Fight TiVo

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC/Washington Post is reporting that the NFL and tinseltown have asked the FCC to stop TiVo from expanding its service to include the ability to transfer recordings to PC's and other remote devices. TiVo says the system is secure. I say its source code will end up on the box. You do the math."

Go ReplayTV!

[Noksagt]

Without the mindshare and press of Tivo, ReplayTV has sported this feature for a long time. Ownere preemptively filed suit to make sure they could legally use show-sharing.

Re:If not for Tivo....

[gosand]

Millions of people wouldn't have known what Janet Jackson's left breast looked like.

It was the right one. Not that I noticed or anything.

Re:Go ReplayTV!

[The Lynxpro]

"Without the mindshare and press of Tivo, ReplayTV has sported this feature for a long time. Ownere preemptively filed suit to make sure they could legally use show-sharing."

Yes, and that's also the feature that bankrupted SonicBlue. Replay is now on its third corporate parent thanks to the failure of branding, simplicity, etc. that TiVo captured. TiVo has 1.6 million subscribers; how many does Replay have? The last time I heard, Replay peaked at 200k. And the only person I know that owns one is Brentano on G4TechTV's "The Screen Savers." And TiVo and Replay have both been on the market roughly the same amount of years.

Re:Go ReplayTV!

[Noksagt]

Unfortunately not--it was voluntarily and prematurely ended by the media companies. They agreed not to sue Replay owners, but the legality of Tivo or others using the same technology wasn't tested. See EFF [eff.org] for more information.

Re:What's next - big brother?

[Nfnitloop]

The NFL is not concerned about their highlight tapes. As the article mentioned, they don't want people on the east coast to be able to record a game and send it to someone on the west coast before the game even airs there.

My understanding is the games are blacked out now until every time zone is prime-time so that more people will watch the game and more people will watch the commercials (which is what it's all about anyway, right?)

Re:What's next - big brother?

[Blimey85]

When you can access the games you want to see for free via the intarweb, you no longer need to pony up the dollars for NFL Sunday Ticket. I'm a Cowboys fan and I live in Seattle so I don't get to see many of their games... I also live in an apartment where dishes aren't allowed so I don't have the ability to get NFL Sunday Ticket since as of yet the NFL has not made a deal with any cable companies. I can get the same thing for any other major sport and did get it two years ago for NCAA football. If I could download the games I wanted to see, even a few days after they have aired, I would. If I could buy their games, especially playoff and Super Bowl games, I would. But for some reason the NFL doesn't sell this stuff. I bought my dad some highlight tapes a few years back but no complete games are available for purchase... and why not? I don't know why they don't sell them... seems like it would be a pretty good market. I wouldn't mind having all of the Super Bowls... especially the older ones that happened before I was born. All we need is a fiber optic connection to our homes and 16 people with Tivos and NFL Sunday Ticket (16 because there are 32 teams so 16 games each weekend... of course they aren't all on at the same time but this way we are covered). Save the game and share it immediately... or better yet, share it while it's still on... maybe a 10 minute delay or something... but with the fiber optic connection, speeds should be fast enough to stream in real time so as soon as the Tivo has saved enough to start streaming, your good to go. That would be awesome.

Re:Go ReplayTV!

[LoadStar]

I DO know that Tivo has had a very suspect privacy policy in the past and that they DO transfer personally idendifiable data back to their dbs.

WRONG. TiVo has a very upfront privacy policy, which can be viewed at http://www.tivo.com/5.11.3.asp [tivo.com]. TiVo also has hosted on their website a PDF file [tivo.com] of a presentation to the FTC that details exactly what information they store on their customers. In short, information is only collected anonymously (this has been verified by multiple third parties) and used in aggregate. If you do not want to participate in this anonymous, aggregate data gathering, you can call TiVo and opt out completely.

Tivo is owned by Phillips

WRONG again. Philips does not own TiVo. TiVo is a publically traded company independent of Philips. Philips did (and still does, I believe) produce products that use licensed TiVo technology.

Re:Go ReplayTV!

[The Lynxpro]

"Mod parent Flamebait"

Oh really? And what about your post?

"I DO know that Tivo has had a very suspect privacy policy in the past and that they DO transfer personally idendifiable data back to their dbs."

You can opt out of aggregate viewer totals. This has been covered ad nauseum (sic) here on Slashdot as well as the general internet community. This is not an issue.

"Tivo is owned by Phillips and sold out to Hollywood, which is why they are still around in their current, Hollywood friendly incarnation."

No its [TiVo] not (owned by Philips). Philips owns a stake in TiVo, just like Time Warner, Viacom, Comcast, NBC Universal, Sony, and Disney. Here's the info:

http://www.tivo.com/5.4.asp

So before recommending someone's post is flamebaited, try getting some of your facts straight in your own postings. That'll make Slashdot all the better a place to visit.