more on TiVo to Bring TV to iPod and PSP

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: [IP] TiVo to Bring TV to iPod and PSP
Date:   Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:14:53 -0800
From:   Brad Templeton <btm () templetons com>
Organization:   http://www.templetons.com/brad
To:     David Farber <dave () farber net>
CC:     mony () roscom com
References:     <4382DBE4.4060708 () farber net>



On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 03:50:44AM -0500, David Farber wrote:
> ALVISO, Calif., Nov. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo Inc.
> (Nasdaq: TIVO), creator of and a leader in television services for digital
> video recorders, today announced an enhancement to its current TiVoToGo
> feature that will allow TiVo subscribers to easily transfer recorded
> television programming to their Apple iPod or PSP devices.

There is something worth noting about annoucements of such "features"
as this.   While it's nice to put a better UI on it, this is not so
much a feature as a removal of a restriction.

With open tools, such as my MythTV box, people would laugh at the
idea of announcing I can now move the video files to other players
(such as my laptop for viewing on the plane) or any other open video
player.   The "feature" is called file copy.   And there are already lots
of tools out there to do the other features they name, like automatic
syncing.

People don't realize, in the debate over DRM tools, just how much
they are missing.   Perhaps the fact that the above was "news"
repeated boldly in the daily newspapers and on web sites should
bring this home.

A year ago, I got an email saying an interview with my late father
would be rerun on a TV station in Toronto.  I connected to the mythtv
tv recorder box at my brother's house in Toronto and told it to record
the show.  Later, I compressed it down to a smaller size and transferred
it to my own machine for watching.   This didn't require any special
features (other than the web browser interface that mythtv has had for
a long time).   This is just what open computers do.


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