I don’t watch that much TV, but with my schedule I am rarely able to see those shows that I really enjoy. I’ve already been sold on the basic idea of the technology, and I relish the idea of getting away from filling up tapes of shoes I don’t want to keep.
Here’s the thing, though. When I program my VCR to record a show, I always like to start a few minutes early and end a few minutes late, to accommodate the vagaries of program lenghths, network start times, etc. Just a while ago, my wife was taping an episode of Babylon 5, but lost the last few minutes, because it started about six minutes late.
So, if I set a TiVo to record Farscape every Friday at eight, and the Sci-Fi Channel decides to show a few extra commercials and doesn’t wrap the show up until 9:05, will I miss the denouement of the program?
I don’t have a TiVO but I do have its lesser known competitor, ReplayTV. I don’t want to make this sound too much like a commercial but ReplayTV has a feature called “sports saver” or something that will automatically add a set amount of minutes to each recorded show. It’s there in case a sporting event goes long. I would guess that TiVO has a similar feature but you should check.
By the way, I chose ReplayTV because though it has a higher first cost, there is no monthly subscription fee ever. All content is free for life.
A good friend of mine has one. It’s very cool, and usually doesn’t cut shows off, but sometimes it can be a problem with sports. They’ve had problems with end times, and I don’t think they have a sports-saver feature like Replay does.
As far as the show that randomly starts 6 minutes late? I’m not sure how Tivo works, I think it goes from the electronic program guide that is distributed by the broadcaster, which could still cause that problem. If the show is regularly scheduled to end at 5 after the hour, it will be recorded without a problem.
I know that the next generation machines (two hard drives, so you can record/live pause two shows and watch a third) are being designed to look for tags embedded in the digital broadcast stream that identify the show, which should get rid of that problem. If you want to record I Love Lucy, it looks for the tag and records it whenever it is broadcast, on any channel.
I have a TiVo. Several months ago they updated the software (this is automatic – you wake up one morning and you’ve got the new version on your system). Since this update you can now tell your TiVo to record a given program with a few minutes’ buffer on either (or each) side. Of course, if you want to record two shows on different channels and one immediately follows the other, you’re going to have to suck it up.
With normal recordings if a show is scheduled to record from 8pm to 9pm and something causes the show to go long, TiVo will stop at 9pm and you lost the overrun.
However TiVo offers what they call padding. Many people do not use padding because it’s a hard pad. You can tell it to start recording 5 or 10 minutes early and also record 5 or 10 minutes past the end time, however this can cause problems for example
channel a you record from 9:00pm to 10:00 pm and you know it runs over by a few minutes so you pad the end 5 minutes
Channel b has a show you want to see from 10pm to 11pm.
The show on channel B will not record because it starts before the show on channel a is over.
Can’t they get around this with PDC (Program Delivery Control) like my VCR - if a program starts late, the VCR will wait for it and won’t stop recording until the end.
(the broadcasters include some sort of signals in the area that has all the teletext stuff in it) - don’t you have this in the USA (admittedly, it’s a bit easier to set up here in the UK, with only a few terrestrial broadcasting companies)
This will never come to life. Having a box that records via tag data means you know when the commercials are being broadcast, which means you could record programs without recording the commercials, which if it becomes a product would guarentee every broadcast station would cease digital broadcasting. Also TiVo or anybody else that put out such a commercial killer would be sued out of existence in mere moments.
Well, I’m the technical writer on the project. We are almost done building it now. The user won’t have any way to access the catalog of tags. It’s not going to be stored anywhere on the set top box. (I could tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you )
The assignment of tags will be at the broadcaster’s discretion. (your digital sat/cable company, not the tv network) They will have the option to lay the program tag over the commercials as well, so you’ll still get the ads no matter what. No one’s really talked about it yet, but the possibility of a broadcaster charging one price for standard broadcast with ads, and a second price for premium service with no ads is out there. I don’t know that it will ever be feasible from their cost perspective, because I haven’t done the math on per household advertising revenues, but the ability to do it is built in.
Also, one of the promises of this technology is that it will collect information on viewing habits and broadcast ads that are focused at the individual viewer. For example, a habitual Buffy watcher probably will get zit cream and clothing ads instead of Geritol, even when they aren’t watching Buffy. (Which is why, even though they pay me big bucks to build it, I still use bunny ears ) The advertisers are very happy about that one.
In the next few years every major brand of set top boxes will have these capabilities. In the US most boxes already have interactive capabilities, but it isn’t advertised because the broadcast infrastructure isn’t in place to utilize it yet. In England right now most people with digital service from Sky (most of the country) can order a pizza using their remote, because the infrastructure is in place. Same with most of Western Europe, about half of South America, and major companies in Israel, Seoul, and Beijing have just signed up.
What, praytell, would be the basis for this lawsuit? The PTV makers are not beholden to the networks or their advertisers. Admittedly, it’s not good news for the networks, but PTVs are still a niche market, and with the prices they sell at, it’s unlikely that they’ll be anything but a niche market for the next several years.
The content creator owns the program being broadcast. The home viewer is entitled to “fair use” of the program, but removing the revenue generating portion of the program without the express consent of the content owner is not considered fair use. IANAL, but I am sure significant legal pressure would be put upon any company who mass markets a commercial killer.
Besides, the US digital television standards are being created by the ATSC, the majority of whose members are broadcasters. Threaten their revenue and they will change the broadcast standards on you, making your STB useless.
Yeah, but the PVR isn’t touching the program at all, they’re just deleting things that aren’t part of the program. And if the broadcasters through an industry association changed the standards, thereby frustrating a PVR innovation, they’d be liable in an antitrust suit. Ultimately, this might lead to the death of free TV but not a lawsuit. (Or at least not a successful one.)
One way to combat this is to avoid commercials and incorporate the sponsorship into the actual show like they did in the 50’s and earlier. That way, it’d be impossible to skip the commercials without missing the show, and it would also make the argument you suggest much stronger because the PVR would have to slice up the actual show.
I had until recently an RCA VCR with the Commercial Advance feature. Although it recorded the commercials, it marked where they occurred, and on playback would FF through them, with the option to show just a blank blue screen while the commercials were being skipped. I’m not aware of any lawsuits against RCA for incorporating this technology, which allowed me to avoid commercials entirely, into their VCR.
AFAIK, the Commercial Advance system doesn’t use digital tags, it simply calculates the approximate location of commercials and looks for the momentary dark screen that signals a transition. It was very accurate, and I really miss it.
The ReplayTV units have a button on the remote that skips ahead 30 seconds - obviously intended for commercial skipping, but I haven’t heard of them being sued.
Doesn’t Tivo let you pay $200 for a lifetime subscription?
TiVo has 3 different payment options. At last check, it was $10/month, $100/year, and $200 lifetime.
And, by the way, I would strongly recommend getting TiVo or ReplayTV. I seriously believe that PTV is the best thing to happen to television since color. For anyone that watches TV at all regularly, it’s really great.
Do you know this as a fact? Here in Japan most VCRs advertise automatic commercial skipping. Mine has the basic low-tech version which uses the fact that most movies here are broadcast with bilingual audio, while commercials use stereo sound. There are newer VCRs that claim to skip commercials even on non-bilingual broadcasts, though I hear they are less reliable.
Here in the US, I have a JVC VCR with a 30-sec skip capability. I wish Tivo had that. They have a 15-sec backup feature, which I do use a lot, but I’d use the 30-sec more often.
Actually, I’d like it to be a 27-sec skip. You have to watch for a coupla seconds because they don’t always show four commercials at each break.
The biggest problem I have is the IR blaster to change channels. It’ll work for a couple weeks at a time, then it’ll drop a digit every fifth change for a couple days. I have digital cable, and I can’t find anyone who will admit to knowing of a replacement cable box that’ll connect to the Tivo with a serial connection.
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) The advertisers are very happy about that one.