TiVo to tap the Net
p2pnet.net News:- TiVo says later this year it’ll expand its digital video recording service so set-top box users will be able to download videos and watch them from on their TVs.
“The new feature, one of several announcements TiVo made Tuesday, comes as homemade clips and Hollywood movies are all becoming more popular on the Web and an increasing number of tech giants are tackling the barriers to deliver video from a computer to the comforts of a living room,” says The Associated Press.
In truth, the grotesquely over-priced, DRM-laden Hollywood movies can hardly be said to be popular, but one of these days, hope the Big Six studios.
And when that happens, it could well be because the people running Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney have finally figured out which way is up.
“We understand now that piracy is a business model,” declared Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney recently.
“It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates competes the same way we do – through quality, price and availability. We we don’t like the model but we realise it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.”
Meanwhile, “Broadband video is growing rapidly on the Web, but the television will continue to be the key way viewers want to watch video,” AP has TiVo’s Tom Rogers saying, going on, “Our overall goal is to provide as many types of content in as many formats to be displayable on the television through TiVo.”
Looks good ——– but wait! Feature films and videos bought at rip-off prics from the likes of Movielink or iTunes won’t work on the new Tivo service.
You guessed it.
DRM. Consumer Control technology. Or C.R.A.P., as the the Free Software Foundation’s Richard Stallman describes it.
“TiVo’s new broadband offerings will work only with downloaded videos that are not copy-protected, such as most user-generated clips and many video podcasts,” says the story.
Also See:
The Associated Press – TiVo stretching into the Internet, November 14, 2006
piracy is a business model – Hollywood lauds pirates, October 10, 2006
describes it – Apple and its C.R.A.P., March 4, 2006
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