I got my first TiVo around May of 2000. I’ve been a TiVo fanatic for a long time. I’ve gotten several friends and family members to buy TiVos due to my love of it. In fact, I’ve had three different TiVos over the years, with a fourth (the High Definition DirecTV model) due shortly.

However, I read something today that made me want to title this article “TiVo goes to hell”. One of the features of TiVo, and something that TiVo themselves expounded on for years was their ability to skip over commercials. They talked about throwing out network programmers in one advertisement, and saying it’s “TV your way”. Well, it’s not just your way anymore. Apparantly according to this article and this one, TiVo will be putting advertisements up when you use the FF on your machine.

The technology they’re using to do this isn’t new. It’s been in TiVo’s software for a very long time (it used to go by the monicker “TiVomatic”), although it’s mostly underused. I don’t think that will be the case anymore. From what I can gather, it will happen during the FF over commercials, it won’t happen during programs. Obviously, since it hasn’t occured yet, I’m not entirely sure what form it will take, but I suspect it will be a variant of thumbs up thing that comes up during some commercials for other television programs (“Hit Thumbs up to Record”).

Provided it doesn’t stop me from using FF (and it doesn’t stop me from skipping over it) I don’t have a real problem with it, but the fact that more advertising is creeping into the overall “TiVo experience” is a bad thing, which is why I think they’re on the road to hell. There is a backdoor 30 second skip feature in TiVo’s software, but I suspect that too will eventually be taken away, as it was litigated out in the ReplayTV DVR. :(

And to make it worse, there’s a law before the US Senate that will essentially make fast forwarding past a program a crime. What the hell? I think the entire country is on the road to hell – damn content providers. I want to do it MY way, not your way.