Bad Tivo (DRM)
Intending to cut the cord on TV watching over the summer, I cancelled my Tivo subscription a few weeks ago. It worked much better than I expected, but not for a very good reason.
I had this naive belief that the extent of the TIVO service was to deliver show listings to my TIVO, so that I could do things like subscribe by show name instead of time, and automatically catch shows that were rescheduled or had 2-hr specials etc. In other words, once I had unsubscribed, I expected that TIVO would work like a dumb VCR once again, where you have to set the time and duration of each show you want to capture ( simple show-semantics-deprivation ). Maybe it would work like a MythTV install where you forget to connect it to a listings server.
But no, when I unsubscribed my Tivo refused to record anything, even a show I was watching. Pressing the red record button or attempting to schedule a recording gets you a popup about how great it would be to once again send money to Tivo, or something like that.
The big hard drive inside and the software attached to it has just gone dumb, dumber than the VCRs that it is supposed to replace.
Well, as many Tivo owners know, TV without Tivo really isn't worth the time. So going cold turkey on TV has been far easier than I thought. Um, thank you(?) Tivo DRM?
8:36:04 AM 
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