I’ve been a TiVo fan and user for awhile now – I got my first TiVo back in May of 2000. I’ve been expounding the benefits of this product to everyone that I can think of for a long time. However, today I read something that has made me wonder how much longer TiVo as we know it will be around. Not from a financial standpoint, but from the way we’ve been using it.
Apparently, TiVo has stuck a deal where PPV movies will automatically be deleted from your TiVo after a certain period of time. This isn’t a major issue to me, because in the 4 years or so I’ve had DirecTV, I’ve gotten maybe 5 or 6 movies off of Pay Per View. So there’s not a lot of business lost there for me. And if I was in the mood to rent on PPV, I’d be more likely to go rent the DVD, as it’s better quality, and has more in the way of features. So the PPV restriction isn’t a big deal to me at all. What bothers me about it is the precedent set. If TiVo will change their policy on the amount of time a PPV movie can be on your TiVo, how long till they give in to some other content provider, who will want to prevent how long you can keep something on your TiVo? Ugh.
Additionally, there’s an article about TiVo and the NFL and the as of yet unreleased “TiVo to Go” technology, but that doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal, as it’s trying to prevent people from re-broadcasting live games into areas they’re not supposed to be doing.
TiVo’s lawyer chimes in on all of this stuff here.