TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Recordings Made Way Too Hard ToGo

Recordings Made Way Too Hard ToGo

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:54:59 -0500

By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page F06

The little secret of digital video recorders is that while they allow
you to amass a large collection of movies and TV shows quickly, you
still have to find time to watch the material you recorded so
effortlessly. For all their merits, these things can't add an extra
two hours to each day to help you catch up on this backlog of video.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans spend hours a day bored out of their
skulls in commercial airplanes, watching recycled TV content and stale
movies and thumbing through in-flight magazines between naps.

TiVo's new TiVoToGo feature attempts to solve both problems at once.
This free software upgrade for TiVo users allows them to transfer
recordings to Windows computers over a home network, stuffing hard
drives with all those shows they might never find time to watch
otherwise.

That's a laudable goal. But TiVoToGo quickly runs aground because its
developers made one small and one huge mistake. First, their failure
to build in a fast, convenient way for TiVo boxes to connect directly
to PCs forces a slow, sometimes glitchy transfer of movies over a home
network. Second, their attempts to placate movie studios by imposing
strict copy controls make this system complicated to set up and
irritating to use.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11103-2005Jan14.html

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