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March 29, 2005
Tivo Pulls a Fast One
Well, it's finally happened. Tivo has gotten on my nerves, and suddenly that new Sean Penn movie that I was thinking about going to see is not so attractive any longer. You see, they've put in an advertisment when I was trying to avoid advertisements.
I watching '24' last night, a fairly good episode in which the bitching between Edgar and Chloe was top notch, and during the first commercial break I started my usual fast forward. (I started watching the show about 45 minutes behind schedule). An ad for 'The Translator' comes up and I see a green thumb, but I just scroll through it. Next thing I know, my Tivo has a popup ad!
So in the foreground of my screen is a video still for this movie and the ads are still fast forwarding in the background. No they didn't! And if that's not bad enough, the damned thing is still there for the next commercial break. I hate it, I absolutely hate it, and Tivo is going to hear from me. I don't mind the suggestions, I don't mind the special messages, I don't mind the featured previews and I don't mind the popup thumb indexed to particular movie ads. I didn't even mind their clumsy and crippled Tivo to Go, which is too damned slow but this goes way too far. This breaks the interface.
It is bad enough that the networks have shifted their time schedules off by one minute to throw off Tivo but this is ridiculous. I think it's time for some blog activism.
UPDATE:
PVR Blog found a workaround. Bullet only halfway dodged.
Posted by mbowen at March 29, 2005 11:25 AM
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� TIVO (TIVO) users voice their discontent from The Media Stock Blog
As discussed in an earlier post, Tivo's (ticker: TIVO) proposed ad strategy could backfire if it increases the company's subscriber churn rate. [Read More]
Tracked on March 29, 2005 06:57 PM
Comments
More on that here. I haven't experienced it myself, so I presume they haven't sicced their little experiment on DirecTiVo users just yet.
Posted by: Xrlq at March 29, 2005 01:17 PM
From what I've read about your knowledge of technology, I'm surprised you use and out-of-the-box solution to record your tv shows. I expected some kind of NAS and a high tech ATI video card.
Posted by: Matt at March 29, 2005 04:04 PM
Well, I might have. I actually looked at the HP gadgets to do analog to digital conversions that could double as a streaming doohickey. But there were two major issues I had with a scratchbuilt. One, is that I'd had Tivo fever for a long time and the second-gen box (Humax) had a nice rebate. But the most important reason is that it had to be family friendly. Plus I couldn't stand the idea of the spousal unit watching soap operas stored on my Maxtors... ick.
If Apple gets any deeper into the home theatre business, which they should, I will consider them first.
Posted by: Anonymous at March 29, 2005 04:35 PM