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(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Oct 15th 2002 2:27pm





Deal Sends Short Films To TiVo

from the experimenting... dept

I'm always glad to see TiVo or other PVR makers experimenting with new ways to offer services to their users. It goes against the lazy consensus in Hollywood that anyone who uses TiVo to skip commercials must be "stealing" from them - and that their simply can't be any different business models for television programming. The latest move is a plan to send a series of short films to all TiVo users. Seems like a nice idea, but I imagine some TiVo users will be somewhat annoyed that some of the space on their device was used to record programs they didn't ask for and might not want.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Short films...

    identicon
    Timmmay!, Oct 15th, 2002 @ 3:43pm

    No doubt these short "films" will be 30 seconds long and "sponsored" by Coca Cola et al?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    The BBC has already tried this

    identicon
    Harry Payne, Oct 16th, 2002 @ 4:19am

    It was not well received by all.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/new_media/2016264.stm has the details

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Jason Airlie, Oct 16th, 2002 @ 5:03am

    The recordings will no doubt be stored on disk space already set aside for such things. This will not take up space that the users normally have access to.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Already doing it

    identicon
    Keith, Oct 16th, 2002 @ 6:11am

    TiVo has been doing this for several months already. These films/commercials/music videos appear on the main menu, near the bottom. I've seen Sheryl Crow videos, Austin Powers trailers, ads for the NFL, and assorted other stuff. Normally I just ignore them, and they go away within a couple of days.

    Any TiVo user who is that worried about storage space should look at upgrading the hard drives. Not hard to do at all.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    The TiVo...

    identicon
    Michael Armstrong, Oct 16th, 2002 @ 7:29am

    has space set aside for such things that doesn't detract from the user's recording space. There's about 5 minutes worth of space they can use for advertising. It's stored on the same partition used for the TiVo software itself, not in the user video partition.

    These promos are typically recorded off Discovery Channel at 0400 EST. You can dodge them by looking for "Advanced Paid Program" and "Teleworld Paid Program" in the ToDo list. Just delete the ToDo item and it skips the recording. If you can't find it in the ToDo list, try searching all programs (TiVo-4, All Programs), go into the details and cancel the recording. Once canceled, they don't seem to come back on their own, although you have to be mildly vigilant of removing other future promos from the list.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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