Copy protection crippling TiVo

Dwight Silverman blogged One of the joys of TiVo is that it frees you to watch TV when you want to, and how you want to. Can't watch the latest episode of your favorite drama when it airs? No problem -- just tell TiVo to grab each episode and watch at your leisure. Or, copy the show to a PC on your home network, then burn it to a DVD for watching on the road. But what if restrictions were placed on how long you could keep a show? Or if there were limitations on which shows you could burn to DVD or transfer across your network? Welcome to version 7.2 of TiVo's new software, which is being installed on TiVo owner's machines when they phone home. Based on reports in the TiVo Community forums and past interviews with TiVo executives, it blocks the ability to save some content away from the system's hard drive. It also allows the copyright holder to control how long it can be saved to disc.... I'm a TiVo user, and while I'm a fan of the machine, I'll bolt as soon as this new "feature" kills out a show I'd been saving. There are alternatives that don't do this, including Windows XP Media Center Edition and my cable company's DVR. Of course, as studios exert more muscle on techology companies, all may fall. Until that day, however, consumers do have a choice.

One of his readers comments: Just build your own PVR http://www.mythtv.org/