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TiVo to charge money for skipping commercials in your own recordings
- V99 19d agoMy parents still have a couple, but I think most people's reaction to this is "TiVo still exists?" CableCARDs are going extinct and there are lots of other options to record OTA these days.
- jjav 19d ago> "TiVo still exists?" Certainly that's my reaction that made me click on this. Hard to believe. Never used TiVo but I ran a MythTV box for a long time, it was really awesome. But it's been ~15+ years or so haven't used it. Can't believe TiVo still exists.
- dspillett 19d ago> TiVo still exists? Not for long. They stopped making hardware a while ago, this feels like the last ditch attempt to find a new business model that works, before it doesn't and what is left of the company is bought and asset stripped (the key remaining asset likely being what data they hold about their customers).
- nottorp 19d agoTiVo has already been bought by some patent trolls years ago.
- dspillett 18d agoIn that case I'm surprised they still hold on to the rest. I would expect them to hold it for long enough that a quick resale doesn't tank what value they can get, keep the patent portfolio and flog the rest for someone else to strip. Presumably then this is an attempt to push up the monthly income figures temporarily ready for a sale, I doubt a patent troll cares about the long term business now they have the part they are experts on exploiting.
- reedf1 19d agoReads like an onion article. I've gone to great lengths to avoid ads - but it's a war I am losing. Content is now interleaved with ads at the creative stage in subtle (and not so subtle) ways, this inexorable convolution occurs even on formerly alternative spaces. Let me pay, I want to pay, I'll pay a lot, just stay out of my fucking head.
- PlunderBunny 19d agoThe only winning move is not to play.
- saturn8601 19d agoJust in case you don't know the SponsorBlock extension can skip past Youtube interleaved ads, promotional items other time wasters. You can pick and choose what you want to skip and in the Youtube Interface you can also press a button to automatically go past a skipped item you wanted to see. [1]:https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ Also hate clickbait title cards? Theres now an extension to remove those as well: https://dearrow.ajay.app/ https://dearrow.ajay.app/ This SponsorBlock extension also integrates with yt-dlp so downloaded videos can have ads stripped in the final video. That way you don't even have to ever go to youtube itself. The war isn't over yet and people must keep fighting back.
- fercircularbuf 19d agoYeah, I pay for youtube so I don't have to watch ads, but then youtube creators at some point all decided to jump on the bandwagon of interleaving ads into their content. Many are kind enough to make it easy to jump ahead to when the ad is over, but man, I would much prefer they set up a patreon or just let me pay them through youtube's own UI. Incredibly annoying.
- ZaoLahma 19d agoI'm surprised YouTube allows it. I'd expect them to want "their" share of the ad money, since creators in a way are side stepping the "normal" ad flow.
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- xiaodai 19d agocan't believe tivo is still around.
- tech234a 19d agoThey stopped selling new units and lifetime subscriptions about a year ago.
- hliyan 19d agoI argued this in 2015: > "...why I believe you will not escape ads by paying for your content: people who can afford to pay for content are people with money, or people with buying power, in other words, the exact same people advertisers look to target. The more buying power you demonstrate, the more advertisers will target you. So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put them back in..."
- tedggh 19d agoI wound pay not to have TiVo at all.
- like_any_other 19d agoThe lesson is you can't pay the danegeld to make a problem go away - the only lasting solution is to get the power and sovereignty to do it yourself. Or as Kipling put it - "But Iron – Cold Iron – is master of them all."
- HPsquared 19d agoThen you have lobbyists, who perform the same function as advertisers. Those with power are the most ad-targeted of all.
- like_any_other 19d ago'Power' in this case is hardware and software under your control.
- whateverboat 19d agoPower in this case is the political power. There's no other power.
- ang_cire 19d agoPolitical power grows from the barrel of a torrent client, in this case.
- walrus01 19d agoOnce again PLEASE DRINK A VERIFICATION CAN (note this is from 2013, and while its origin is as a shitpost, it's prophetic) https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632877-halo-4/66477630 https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632877-halo-4/66477630
- tokai 19d agoIt was based on a patent for a system where you had to get up from your couch and yell McDonalds to continue you game or movie. Its prophetic because it is satirizing those corporations explicit fantasies.
- walrus01 19d agoAs I recall from the original post when it was going around, it was related to the xbox one (before it was released at the end of 2013) being online only and blocking the resale/trade of physical disc based games, google "xbox one 2013 controversy" https://www.google.com/search?&q=xbox+one+2013+controversy https://www.google.com/search?&q=xbox+one+2013+controversy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/19/xbox-one-drm-second-hand-restrictions-abandoned https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/19/xbox-one-...
- skinfaxi 18d agoThe patent was filed in 2009 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
- tyffanypastecf 19d ago[dead]
- theginger 19d agoThis is a really good example of how capitalism doesn't work so well in a digital economy. Normally there is are various arguments about how the subscription pays for the development / invitation. But here we have a feature that's been there for more than a decade, the only innovation is figuring how to monetize it.
- gblargg 19d agoIsn't this because it's not a free market, e.g. the DMCA and other laws that prevent publishing how to work around digital locks?
- agileAlligator 19d agoYep. IP is not true "property" either, since it is not "scarce"
- tancop 19d agoFree markets are impossible under capitalism. If wealth is allowed to concentrate there will be some companies that get so powerful they can influence public policy. At that point you get regulations designed to make competing with them expensive or risky, like DMCA or submarine patents. They also legalize union busting and get courts to declare that you can get fired for any reason and getting pressured to sign an unfair contract is your fault. The only thing you can really do against it as a government is making sure nobody ever captures a majority of any market and workers have ultimate control over their company. But that system is a form of market socialism so you can't really call it capitalist anymore.
- imtringued 19d agoCorrect, in a free market the returns reflect the underlying reality and if that reality means that in the capital abundance stage further capital is unnecessary and capital carries maintenance costs, then the return to capital becomes negative. If capitalism is the pathological obsession that capital should always net a positive return, then it is incompatible with free markets by definition.
- grishka 19d agoI'm surprised there's an online component to that. I've never seen such a device in real life but I've always assumed that these have some sort of automatic commercial break recognition and that such features were first introduced way back in the 90s when requiring an internet connection was impractical to say the least.
- flowrange 19d agoHere in France, some Internet+television providers have started implementing a new rule : you can't skip commercials on recorded shows. It was entirely dictated by TV channels, in order to close the obvious "recording loophole" : instead of watching the show in their VOD app, you could record it, and obviously skip all commercials. Now you can't anymore. There's even a small dialog when you try that tells you that "Due to a specific demand by <TV Channel>, skipping is a disabled feature."
- soco 19d agoIn Switzerland there's another solution: the streaming providers (Sunrise, Teleboy) insert their own ads if you choose to skip the channel ads. To be fair, Teleboy offers also a more expensive tier without ads at all, but like other commenters said, I reckon that public is gonna be milked more and more.
- tiagod 19d agoIn Portugal, the providers were fined for showing ads in recordings and ordered to stop.
- 7734128 19d agoThe correct response should be to actively disregard all IP owned by corporations participating in that behavior.
- xtiansimon 19d agoSolution—don’t watch TV
- shellwizard 19d agoOr use tvheadend + comskip
- consp 19d ago> Here in France, some Internet+television providers have started implementing a new rule : you can't skip commercials on recorded shows. Wait until you hear of the extended version of this: Some longer whole day live sports on Dutch RTL (and others, it's catching on) have the option for playback but you have to watch from the start and cannot fast forwards in any way. Want to watch the last match? You need to pay more or play several hours of ad ridden TV first! They are just m3u8 files so extract that, drop it in VLC and you are fine. But 99.9% of the populance will never be able to do that.
- KevinMS 19d agoI've been a heavy user of Tivo from 1999 to a couple years ago when I dropped cable TV. I have never heard of SkipMode. Is it something they just added? because "longest-standing and most popular DVR features" doesn't sound like it was just added.
- Mashimo 19d agoSome commend on Reddit said it was introduced in 2015. I can't verify that.
- wodenokoto 19d agoNever owned a TiVo, but I just looked up what skipmode is, and I thought that was the whole point of a TiVo. Like, it has always been advertised as record shows and skip commercials. When they said skip commercials in the early 2000s, did they just mean fast forward?
- KevinMS 19d agothere's a 30 second skip button, and also the fast forward button is really well tuned so you watch for the end of the commercial break, hit play, it jumps back a few seconds to where you couldn't react fact enough. It all worked very well somehow.
- lakkal 19d agoI loved TiVo for years also until around 2011 or so, when I 'upgraded' my ancient box to whatever their new hardware was. The interface was so laggy I could no longer consistently FF through crap and have it autorewind that couple of seconds to the beginning of the show anymore. That was the impetus for me to cancel TV and sell mine completely, which I don't regret at all.
- pjc50 19d agoI wonder how long technical protection measures will last in the era when everyone has an AI with a spectacular reverse-engineering capability. See the current MIDI piano thread. At the very basic level you can have the AI spot when ads are playing and mute them for you. Used to be easily done with loudness and various other in-band signals.
- avaer 19d agoThey were saying the same thing about DVR's ability to skip those pesky ads, and look where we are. When the enshittification hits AI, your AI will magically develop the ability to politely refuse such a request. You could hack together your own solution (like you can today), but most people won't and that's the point.
- latexr 19d agoExactly. This (the argument you’re replying to) is basically the same as when some new tech is introduced to the public (e.g. LLMs) and on day one you get hundreds of hot takes on how some company (e.g. Google) is DOOMED. As if they’ll just roll over and die at the first sign of trouble. It’s like smacking a tennis ball to the other side of the court and immediately thinking you won, completely ignoring there’s a person on the other who’ll just smack it back. It boggles the mind how people still fall for the promises of these giants about what a wonderful world they’ll create and all the amazing things you’ll be able to do. Whoever was caught off guard by (for example) LLM providers introducing ads hasn’t been paying any attention.
- darkwater 19d agoThis. I think the generation that grew up and became adults alongside the Internet (so, early techie millennials) already lived through this illusion. And yes, some of the initial dreams/promises actually became true but most turned sideways given enough time, and the same will happen again.
- HPsquared 19d agoThis general kind of thing is why diverse (currently Chinese) AI is so important ... and one reason it'll be banned.
- kotaKat 19d ago[dead]
- Steve44 19d agoVirgin Media cable user in the UK here. I had their Tivo box until a couple of years ago when the forced an "upgrade". The new box has uch better hardware but the software was a leap backwards. Regarding ads, on recorded programmes I can fast forward through them. It's not a direct skip but can jump +30 seconds at a time. When viewing through any of the channel apps most of them used to allow skipping, but over the past few months it's now blocked on all of them I think. They do tell you how many adverts there are in each block and how long the one is, such as "2/10 29 seconds to go". Unfortunately they don't tell you the total length of the break, some sections are just a few seconds.
- toilet 19d agoStremio + Torrentio + Gluetun
- chrisjj 19d ago> TiVo to charge money for skipping commercials in your own recordings Deceptive and false title. True title is: TiVo Plans to End Free Automatic Commercial Skipping in November, Tests Paid Premium Replacement Service
- Ariarule 19d agoThat is also the title I see clicking through into the page, although it seems to be 24 characters over the limit, so that _some_ change to OP would have have been required to submit it.
- rootsudo 19d agoHonestly I thought they disappeared 20 years ago. The old dvrs were great for old pata hdd that you could individually RMA. God I’m old.
- andrewstuart 19d agoShocking! That TiVo still exists.
- fithisux 19d agoIt depends on their analysis. Companies are interested in profit and not loyalty or morality. If they have done their analysis and predicted that this decision will bring more profit, good for them. Intuitively, without any analyses I predict the opposite will happen. But they may have real data supporting their decisions which I do not have.
- OroPla 19d agoI couldn't imagine engaging with any form of media where the possibility of being exposed to an ad exists. I haven't seen an ad in over 20 years now and I can't go back. Only watch Blu-rays and when I do Youtube, I do it through yt-dlp. If there are ads, I'm out. I just can't physically handle this assault on my mind. It's too much.
- david-gpu 19d agoI am on the same boat. Product placements on movies and TV series are bad enough.
- BLKNSLVR 19d agoSo, like, you just have to imagine all the things that could make you unhappy and jealous that you don't have?!?
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- someguynamedq 19d agoSo you don't use any form of social media whatsoever? Ad blocks don't block sponsored content
- Mateon1 19d agoSponsorblock does exactly that (and a bit more). I can't watch youtube without it nowadays. Subscription feed -> yt-dlp -> mpv with sponorblock. If this ever stops working I'm not suffering through ads, I'm ignoring youtube as a platform.
- shellwizard 19d agoYou can use yt-dlp with sponsorblock timings directly [0] to get rid of all the sponsorship segments from the final video, no need to use it later via mpv. [0] https://yt-dlp.net/guides/sponsorblock https://yt-dlp.net/guides/sponsorblock
- amelius 19d agoAds are really a cancer of modern society. Can we please just ban them to yellow pages only? (Where we can watch them on __our__ terms, not __their__ terms)
- bell-cot 19d agoFar more a vice. Cancer victims don't like cancer, and try to be rid of it. Vs. modern ads are far more like cheap-at-first drugs. Similar to dirt cheap printers with ever-more-expensive consumables, E-Z financing plans that nobody reads the fine print for, and politicians who conveniently forget all their wonderful-sounding promises the moment they're elected.
- xeyownt 19d agoEnshitiffication again.
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- someguynamedq 19d agoGabe Newell had the clearest thoughts on this topic
- rpdillon 19d agoYeah, it's interesting to watch humanity graduate from "how can we delight the customer the best?" to "how can we trap the customer and extract the most from them?"
- theage 19d agoIf you can get your recording to play in the browser my TivySkip Web Extension[0][1] will skip broadcast commercials for free. I use Jellyfin's web portal to playback my recordings adfree but the ext will actually work on any site playing live TV with various jump around and visual block/mute schemes to choose from. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tivyskip/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tivyskip/ [1] https://github.com/relaxo-player/TivySkip-extension https://github.com/relaxo-player/TivySkip-extension
- surcap526 19d ago[dead]
- jonhohle 19d agoI’ve been a TiVo holdout because it is a great for OTA and can stream recordings to mobile devices, even over the internet. It really just works. That said, I paid for a lifetime subscription for a specific feature set. I’m sure there terms allow them to turn it into a brick without having to compensate me. They seem to want to get rid of their non-corporate customers anyway, so maybe this is how they do it.
- ProllyInfamous 19d agoThe most surprising thing here is that Tivo is still a company. I knew the Tivo employee that coded the GUI button for "play a random recorded episode" (circa 2010). He/Nate left there ~2012, when it seemed to be on its last gasps of relevency. An unrelated-shoutout to all us "Papered Trees," from waybackwhen... boy did we watch some recorded television, stoned.
- _superposition_ 18d agoThe pinnacle of enshittification
- AngryData 18d agoADs are why I pirate most media. Yeah sure I could rip a lot of it from blurays and strip it out, but why should I need to go through the effort to play media I already own the way I want? Why spend the power and time to rip a BR when someone else has already done it? I can download a rip faster than I can rip from a disc already in my drive.