TiVo turns to the dark side…

September 14, 2005 | Rants and Raves | By: Mark VandeWettering

Sigh. I’ve been flaming Microsoft for not listening to its customers, so it is sad to see that TiVo has decided to screw their customers at the request of copyright holders. Previously, you could store whatever programs you recorded for as long as you like. Now, if the copyright holder requests it, TiVo will refuse to allow you to keep your programs as long as you want, and will keep you from saving them out using TiVo2Go.

Sigh.

Tivo, I wonder just why you think customers should be happy that you’ve removed features from your product, or that you’ve placed the desires of copyright holders (who, I assume, don’t pay you) over the desires of consumers who are merely exercising their rights to time shift their material.

I guess I won’t be buying another TiVo either. Hello MythTV.

Addendum: It appears that this was mostly a bug, the flag was only meant for PPV broadcasts (which is slightly less bad, but not entirely great either), and was triggered by accident.