Et Tu TiVo ….

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According to Wired Magazine digital recording company TiVo, has buckled under to the pressures of Hollywood and will start to allow advertising into the boxes (news). The ads will take the place of the “thumbs up” icon already shown while you bypass commercials. Perhaps even more insidious is the plans to integrate Macrovision copyright protection schemes into the device. This will actually place limits on how long you can keep a recording of a program. TiVo had this to say:

TiVo officials say the new restrictions will apply only to pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs. If Macrovision expands the feature to any other content, the deal is off, said Brodie Keast, executive vice president of service business at TiVo. “We believe the consumer should be in control of entertainment — either free over-the-air or paid broadcasts — and this doesn’t change that in any way,” Keast said. “But reaching this kind of compromise allows us to innovate freely.”

Believe that and I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. As I mentioned way back in my original “Movie Piracy is a Felony” post this is just another case of big money and big corporations putting pressure on companies with their own best interests at heart, not those of the customer or consumer. It’s hard to blame TiVo for rolling over and giving up it’s lunch money like some high school freshman to Hollywood’s captain of the football team. Especially after they all but wiped out TiVo’s main competitor RePlayTV when they failed to squeal like Ned Beatty did in Deliverance (news)(news).

So how long are you going to sit idly by and let big record companies and bigger Hollywood production companies dictate their view of how things should be to you?

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