Interesting little bit on PVRblog yesterday about the DRM in TiVo. A reader wrote in describing how he run up against a show on his TiVo that he couldn’t mark “Keep until I delete” or transfer via TiVo to Go. It wasn’t even PPV content.
That sucks.
Turns out it may have been a bug in the Macrovision “protection” (and, if when you hear “protection” in this context, you envision big italian guys in dark coats and severed horse’s heads, I’m right there with you, buddy) that tripped the flag on the particular show as a result of noise in the broadcast signal. The whole problem wouldn’t even exist if TiVo hadn’t put Macrovision into their box in the first place.
I’m not bashing TiVo. I love TiVo. This, unfortunately, is what happens when a small company makes a sweet product that a huge industry fears. Unfortunately for TiVo, it’s add DRM or get stomped into paste by entertainment industry lawyers, so I don’t really hold it against TiVo. But, since I am still stinging over being left behind by TiVo to Go and I still don’t have any way to really use my badass HDTV since I can’t get an HD TiVo, it’s really starting to look like I need to roll my own. MythTV is looking pretty sweet these days and, by all accounts, is easier to set up now then ever before. I caught a recent Systm episode where the guys built a MythTV PC and it really did look pretty simple. Combine that with the new OS X Myth front-end and, well…
Okay, so I can have my own PVR that does way more than TiVo, with no DRM and I can watch content from any Mac in my house? And all I have to pay is what it costs to build the PC, no subscription? Sounds kind of no-brainer to me.
Now I just need to find some time.
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