Comments on: TiVo increasing on-screen ads, cable companies rejoice

By: notwatchingads...YO

notwatchingads...YO — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 07:19:06 +0000

One day ads will dominate the screen and the actual show will be a tiny box in the corner that subsequently hovers around the screen like a bug and has a screensaver that activates every two minutes, WITH ITS OWN FUCKING AD-BREAKS and thats not even when you record, thats just the standard view: when you record something you will have to watch an 8-hour lecture about piracy and the divinity of advertisment, and will have to have watched it within 12 hours of recording or your home becomes property of Stan Liebowitz and you incur a penalty that must be worked off in the employ of viacom. I need a time machine guys

By: Garrett A

Garrett A — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:35:26 +0000

side note about firefly — if you’ve never used a RF remote, you have not lived… -GA

By: Garrett A

Garrett A — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:32:36 +0000

if you’re so concerned, it’s really difficult to beat Snapstream’s BeyondTV. It really does EVERYTHING — including auto removal of commericals, etc. — but does require you supply the hardware/OS.

the firefly remote is pretty killer as well.. -GA

By: Groomehorse

Groomehorse — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:10:59 +0000

I’ve had TWC Cable in NYC (HD dvr box) for over a year now, but I just got a Tivo HD, thinking I would get away from the higher prices and fees. Wrong – so before I even set it up, I’m returning it because Tivo expects you to pay for a cablecard, and other equipment which is needed for the service recording.

Instead, I’m getting a good HD antenna and HD drv NOT associated with any service. The cost may be a bit more upfront, but within a year, it’s paid for itself twice, and no data-gathering commercials, no fees, taxes, etc.

Content – we all know most of it is bull, so why support it all, or support infrastructure that forces one kind of service? Just say no.

By: Rudiger

Rudiger — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:27:42 +0000

I love watching Tivo erode their enormous goodwill.

By: Likeabite

Likeabite — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:28:12 +0000

@ Synergy…the title may not be an indication but I believe he is talking about it from a costumer’s perspective.

By: trumani

trumani — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:49:38 +0000

@rudy

The feburary cutover is only for over-the-air (rabbit ear) analog going away. Most cable companies are still keeping their analog (basic) services open for the forseeable future. But eventually these cable companies will get rid of analog in order to open up more bandwidth for on-demand and more HD services. When that happens, I’ll still have saved more money this way..

By: Synergy

Synergy — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:31:59 +0000

Why would cable companies rejoice at Tivo putting more advertising on their DVRs? Tivo gets the money not the cable cos unless there is a revenue sharing agreement.

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:42:15 +0000

I can’t speak for any other cable provider but Comcast’s DVR is a joke compared to TiVo. What I love about Comcast’s DVR is the built-in delay feature. Just for fun it randomly decides not to immediately respond to input from the remote. Press pause and it might actually pause anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds later. Doesn’t happen all the time, just enough times to annoy the heck out of you. Then I really love the keep recording and recording and recording function. I delete an episode and 20 minutes later it’s taping the same damned episode. That’s better than TiVo’s version of a recycle bin any day of the week.

In this humble user’s opinion, TiVo is worth every penny.

BTW, TiVo tried this type of advertising a few years ago and it quietly disappeared. I suppose they figured out that people weren’t actually interested in clicking to see an advertisement.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:39:46 +0000

Mykie – Read up on Tivo’s remarriage with DirecTV. They will be producing an HD Tivo to support DirecTv, launching in Q3 2009

By: Rudy

Rudy — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:38:03 +0000

Rosegold – That sounds great as long as your torrents are all legal. However, it has been my experience (not claiming this is fact) that everyone I’ve seen that downloads torrents does both legally and illegally.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:35:26 +0000

BGR – Check your prices. Monthly Service for DVR by Comcast in Northern California is $15.95/mo – actually more expensive than Tivo

Trumani – Have you not seen the 3 million ads and news broadcasts about analog broadcasting going away in 2009?

By: Marshall47

Marshall47 — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:40:31 +0000

There’s an underlying fact that everyone needs to consider: television in the United States is and always has been an advertising supported medium. With the exception of premium stations, your monthly cable bill is paying for the service and infrastructure, *not* the content.

Tivo’s convenience disrupts funding for programming, so they’ve come under a lot of pressure from content providers. Tivo’s had to develop alternate advertising platforms to appease the various networks/channels. Most, if not all, of the revenue derived from ads displayed by Tivo go to the content producers through revenue sharing agreements.

By: Likeabite

Likeabite — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:58:26 +0000

@ RoseGold I agree
The annoyance over the ads is not because of how small it is but that it is there. Period. That’s like saying seeing ads on your building or national monuments are fine because you do not have to look or read it if you do not want to. While I personally do not care of ads, a lot of ad placements are really stupid because if you are already paying for an item then why be bombarded with such nonsense? If that’s what people wanted to be subjected to they would watch regular TV and not have TiVo or DVR, both of whose main selling points is the ability to skip commercials. So they make you skip other commercials and ads just to subject you to theirs? Makes no sense.

And contrary to what some might think the reason people say “just TiVo it” is not because it does it better. It is the same reason why people say ‘youtube it’ and ‘google it.’ Yes youtube will have practically every video on the planet but does it do it better than Hulu these days? No. And clustered search engines do a better job than google at finding exactly what you are looking for but they are not as popular as google. If they were I’m sure the phrase would be quite different, same with Tivo.

By: Orga

Orga — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:55:33 +0000

I go with what RoseGold said, myself, but that’s neither here nor there.

Room-to-room viewing is something that can be done with FiOS. If it’s not available on Comcast already, I’m sure it will be before too long.

I only have one question about TiVo, however: does it record shows, or does it record time slots?

By: RoseGold

RoseGold — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:06:21 +0000

why do i need tivo or a dvr when i have torrents tversity plus an xbox360….

By: StevenGlansburg

StevenGlansburg — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:55:37 +0000

As long as late night soft-core porn is left alone I’m fine with it

By: mykie

mykie — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:44:34 +0000

I recently started noticing the blue bar above the timeline when pausing shows, but that’s not what’s going to get me to dump Tivo.

Lack of HD support for satellite customers is whats going to get me to dump Tivo.

By: Dom

Dom — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:43:39 +0000

You know there are a lot of T.V. ads that are pretty cool and I’d even go so far as to call some of em artistic but there’s a thin line between marketing genius and just plain annoying.

By: White Gryphon

White Gryphon — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:19:30 +0000

It’s a blue bar* with some text above the timeline. No pictures, no video, nothing. It’s a line of text. On a button. It goes away when you press “Clear”, just like the timeline. Period. You don’t have to listen to it, or watch it, or even read it if you don’t want to.

And BTW, in my area, it only costs $1 more a month than the cable DVR and remote rental, and I can do a _lot_ more with it. See my post above. I didn’t even mention room-to-room viewing, and all the video podcasts that you can have downloaded automatically, among other things.

I like having control.

*I thought it was green, but I checked.

By: rimbuk

rimbuk — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:13:49 +0000

There’s a reason people say “just TiVo it” when they mean record it. Tivo does it better, they do it right. Everything just works, kinda like what people say about Macs and Apple.

I’ve tried cable box DVR’s a few times and have promptly switched back to TIVO because the cable DVRs missed shows, were hard to use, and just came up lacking in every way.

Literally 2 weeks ago, I looked into moving to DirecTV and the AT&T UVerse. I compared all the prices to get the same things I have now (6 TVs, 3 Tivo, HD on one channel, Sports package).

With both of the other companies, I’d end up paying more for their service than I currently do for my HD Cable and 3 Tivo subscriptions. Only a couple dollars more, but still… not worth it to downgrade from Tivo to another service.
AT&T even offered to give me a $100 Visa Gift card if I switched.. I couldn’t justify it.

By: Calhoun Tubbs

Calhoun Tubbs — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:11:11 +0000

You deserve to have those ads ruin your TiVo experience if all you’re watching is That 70’s Show. Yuck.

By: TimaPhillips

TimaPhillips — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:05:19 +0000

Tivo over Comcast’s DVR box hands down. The menu’s in the Tivo are SO much easier to use/navigate. I gladly pay the extra few dollars a month to avoid a reluctant Comcast DVR. The Tivo actually records what I want to watch every time…unlike Comcast’s. The ads are minimal on screen and never bother me. It’s not like some blatant internet video ad before everything you do.

Also, here’s a great feature that’s an ad but the customer doesn’t see it as such. Let’s say your watching some recorded Fox show from prime time. If you actually happen to watch any commercial for another Fox show (lets say right before yours starts), a little icon comes up on the top right of the screen asking you to press the thumbs up button if you want to schedule a recording of it. Hit that button, tell it how long you wanna keep it, how much extra/less time you want it to record and you’re done. S.I.M.P.L.E. That would take about an hour on Comcast’s box. And Comcast’s box still probably record it because it doesn’t have the clip feature.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:57:46 +0000

My 2 Tivos are GREAT but my 2 Direct TV HD DVR’S are far superior to my Tivos, the Direct TV UI is the best UI on the planet (IMHO) and I get no unwanted ads on Direct TV either, when my TIVO’s die ill replace em with Direct TV DVR’S.

By: trumani

trumani — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:56:34 +0000

you forget that tivo still works with analog cable (analog – $15/mo vs digital $50/mo).

Cable companies force you to go to digital cable before obtaining a DVR.
Given that, I still receive HD (networks, abc/cbs/fox/etc..) signal over my analog cable network and can record on my hd tivo.

Given that, it’s a much cheaper option for me right now. Once analog cable becomes unavailable, I’ll gladly sell my tivo box or just toss it and move to a cable/satellite dvr box.

By: twitchy

twitchy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:53:06 +0000

I ask this out of genuine ignorance, because I never owned a DVR: Exactly what do you get for the monthly fee? I don’t mind having to pay for the equipment, but why would I pay to keep using what I already bought? For whatever it costs to buy the machine, shouldn’t it automatically figure out when the shows are playing and record them?

By: illa

illa — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:51:08 +0000

Tivo’s for suckers.

By: SpeedRazer

SpeedRazer — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:49:48 +0000

@Jeremiah Duh – It’s better because it gives advertisers more routes to your eyeballs.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:48:54 +0000

Actually, there are a variety of cable and satellite hard drive expansion options. Not 100% coverage, but Dish, DirecTV, some Scientific Atlanta cable boxes, etc. I here Verizon is looking at FiOS TV expansion options as well.

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:39:20 +0000

I really don’t understand the whole popularity with TiVo…why again is it so much better than regular DVR?