Reports by Consumers

Engadget has found their way to a beta version of TiVo Desktop 2.1 and they give it a once over.

The good stuff they find includes better support for TiVoToGo on portable devices and a TiVo-branded video player complete with the green playback bar and sounds we're all used to. They also are getting rid of the playback password, which sounds like good news, but...

Also, what's up with the UI? The TiVo remote works because my fingers can feel around the rewind/pause/fast-forward buttons. Great physical UIs don't make for great software UIs. Or maybe I'm just bitter over the whole DRM thing and taking it out on a poor, defenseless UI.

I have a tivo and a pc running BeyondTV 3.52. My pc's encoder is a Hauppauge PVR-250. Tivo records everything in best quality. I have recorded the same show on both the Tivo and BTV. I must admit that the quality of the BTV (also recorded at best quality)is far superior to the TivoTogo files. That said the BTV files are about three times the size of the Tivo files). Not sure this addresses the article here just thought to mention if anyone else has experienced this?

"So this "upgrade" removes my ability to strip the DRM on .tivo files so that I can watch _my_ .tivo files on _my_ mac laptop?"

If you really hate Tivo so much because of their DRM, then maybe you should stop using / subscribing to Tivo. But you won't do that, will you .. ?

I know it's not a TiVo, but it *is* a valid alternative if you are truly passionate about controlling your environment.

TiVo is legally covered, those who want to get around the DRM will do so, the rest of us won't even notice, and life will go on.

"You need to realize that there is simply no way that TIVO can provide a TTG-like feature _WITHOUT_ DRM - they will simply get their asses sued off by the TV/Movie industry"

I can video tape any show, and import that show on a cheap video card, without DRM. Why should a TiVo box I paid for and pay monthly for be programmed to let me do less with the files in my own home?

They wouldn't be helping folks spread them online or try selling shows on discs. I think the assumed evil in TiVo customers is totally unfair and unrealistic.

Furthermore, your assumed "good" in Tivo customers is unrealistic.

Get real. These files get out unrestricted and all of the sudden people are sharing/emailing/etc them all over the place. People dont like that, it is called "stealing" (see mp3's). Generally stealing is considered not "good" and ultimately someone will have to pay. Tivo does not want people stealing nor do they want to pay for enabling them to be stolen.

Engadget? Are you kidding? Why in the world would you quote an outfit that posted the ludicrious "Tivo Death Watch" junk only weeks before Tivo signed a deal with Comcast? Engadget has been totally discredited; the sooner its owner and his 386 computer go belly-up, the better!

There are more than a few problems with DRM and DRM with TivoToGO... Matt's 99% honest user figure is pretty close to the mark I think.

DRM seems to only stop honest users from performing actions previously allowed as "fair use", but does nothing to actually slow down actual pirates. True pirates and TV rip distro groups don't use their TiVo to rip stuff anyways. They rip from the actual network satellite transmission feeds or DTV broadcasts...

Just the other day, I tried to use tivotogo and the Sonic myDVD tivo suite on trial to burn "the contender" for a friend who missed it. I dutifily typed in my t2g password, it transcoded for hours (which drives me nuts) and then "unknown error" bork/coaster... I took an unDRM'd MPEG2 off my SageTV box and it burned it without issue. Both are mpeg2 files, but only the DRM one locks me into a specific buggy DVD burning software platform.

I suggest everyone that is rallying around TiVo's DRM to check out one person's experiences with the last ten years of DRM:

Anyway everything is already out there DRMing on the Tivo to go end means nothing. This is just Tivo doing it's usual belly flop dance to placated the media powers at the expensive of their real customers.

How are you watching .tivo files on your Mac?

Mark - I strip the DRM from the file using the process outlined at http://www.evillabs.net/tivo/ and a Windows system. Then copy them to my PowerBook for when I want to watch a show away from my TV. Isn't that what TiVoToGo was designed to allow me to do?

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