Just a Vapor

I’ve been a huge Tivo fan since I got my DirecTV Tivo about three years ago. I often joked when I first got it that buying a Tivo is almost like joining a cult. It was so cool that I was evangelizing for Tivo all the time. I got several friends to buy Tivos, and they each got several people to buy them too.

Now I’m hearing that Tivo is considering measures that would affect it’s most popular features. I rarely watch commercials any more because of Tivo. I will wait until about 15 minutes after a show has started if it’s a half hour long and a half hour if it’s an hour long show before watching it so I can skip the ads. Tivo now wants to make it much harder to get away with not seeing ads. They also want to make it possible to delete shows and movies from people’s recorders automatically if they keep them too long. Not cool!

I originally got DirecTV because it was the only way to get both Fox News and TechTV where I lived. I had just finished college in Fargo, and my parents live in the North Twin Cities Metro. I could get Fox News at their house on cable and TechTV in Fargo, but neither had both. I watched both more than anything else.

Later I got Tivo because Circuit City had a DirecTV Tivo for $100. I loved it from the start.

Now, if Tivo screws up and does this, I will not only get rid of my two Tivo’s, I’ll probably consider going back to cable. TechTV is going to hell real fast, and seems to show no desire to improve, and if you combine that with Tivo seeming to want to do the same thing, there may be no more reason to stay with DirecTV.

My only hope at this point as far as keeping Tivo and DirecTV is that someone will right new software for the Tivo that I can put on my boxes. They are really just computers running a modified version of Linux, so it shouldn’t be that hard. Currently one of my Tivo’s is hacked to give me a few features not available on a factory Tivo and both have hard drive hacks. My older one has the original 40 GB hard drive, as well as a 120 GB drive and the newer one has a 120 GB drive.

If they screw it up too much, I will drop DirecTV, get cable, and build my own Tivo. Freevo is a project that provides free PVR software for home-built Digital Video Recorders. That may be the more attractive way to go.

Tivo might just end up out of business if they screw up too much. According to this article over 61% of Tivos are DirecTV Tivos. I plan on letting DirecTV know that I will drop their service upon completion of my current service contract if Tivo makes the changes they are considering. If enough DirecTV customers agree with me, it should put more than enough pressure on Tivo to back off. They may be paid by advertisers to make it harder for viewers to skip commercials, but it ultimately doesn’t matter if there are no Tivo viewers.