« October 2004 | Main | December 2004 »

NDS is coming to town

USA Today ran a story yesterday about DirecTV's new combo DVR/VOD unit that will eventually replace TiVo.

"DirecTV is preparing to offer a digital video recorder (DVR) service in mid-2005 that could duplicate virtually every feature now available from current partner TiVo, plus provide video on demand similar to what's offered on cable, say executives of the company preparing the software."

This is bad news for TiVo, since they usually count the million or so DirecTiVo customers as their own, and share subscription and ad profits. This news came to light this past summer and I speculated on it last year, but I think it'll still be bad news for people like me that are quite happy with their dual tuner, native quality recording TiVo boxes. I'm not much of a fan of Video On Demand, so I don't think I'm losing much by not having it. The other big difference between an NDS box and a DirecTiVo will be the interface and basic functionality. Competitors haven't really come close to the wishlist, season pass, or basic reliability a TiVo box provides. My guess is that now DirecTV has announced they're working on this, don't expect to see any major updates to the DirecTiVo OS. I doubt we'll see the Home Media Option. I doubt we'll see Multi Room Viewing, and I seriously doubt we'd ever see TiVo To Go on the DirecTV units.

No word on what will become of the HD-DirecTiVo, but I assume unless the NDS boxes support HDTV, they'll likely keep supporting that box over the normal DirecTiVo boxes. At least that's my hope, since I'd like to finally get a HDTV monitor and HD-TiVo this coming year. [thanks, Brian]

November 30, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

PVRblog quite possibly on CNN tonight

Word on the street is that I might get a soundbite or two on tonight's NewsNight with Aaron Brown, on CNN (here's the TiVo Central link to record it). The shot at right is a screengrab from before my interview, when I was taking photos like this one in the studio (by the way, I love that since I was sitting in Portland they put a photograph of Portland behind me).

I talked about the TiVo advertising story and how it's kind of unfair to people that bought TiVos thinking they could avoid advertising. I did couch it by saying they gotta get profitable somehow and it's not entirely unexpected, but still a bummer for consumers and fans of TiVo's disruptive nature.

I often forget how nuts TV can be and I'm sure I was a nervous, stammering, sweating freak, so I'm looking foward to seeing how CNN gets anything useful out of me.

November 30, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future?

All Your TV has a great piece running now called Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future?. In it, they touch on HBO's recent moves to curtail the consumer rights on recordings, where recorded episodes can't be saved forever, and will have a mandated delete date. I'm guessing HBO thinks a large drive TiVo with a whole season of Six Feet Under would cut into DVD sales of that season, but I tend to view shows on DVD for the extras so I think they're overdoing it if that's the case.

The phrase "transitional fair use" is one to watch because it sounds like an acceptable compromise between viewers and networks when in reality networks would like to roll back the basic freedoms you legally enjoy today. What if you go on vacation for a couple weeks in the summer? What if you're busy at work for a few weeks before you can tend to the backlog of HBO shows saved?  It'll be interesting to watch HBO try and balance the needs of their business while at the same time keeping viewers happy. It's a disturbing trend for those of us that just want to enjoy TV on our own time and it's a shame to see HBO leading the way down this dark path [thanks, Steve]

November 29, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

My Movies - A FreeWare MCE Add-On

My Movies is a pretty useful looking plugin to Microsoft's Media Center Edition, enabling you to browse your movie collection, search through actor bios, and even keep track of which films have been seen, all within the MCE interface.

It's freeware/donationware, and just one of many MCE add-ons programmed by  lone developers. MCE has a whole plugin API, including a software development kit, which is probably why a lot of folks say MCE2005 offers the most capabilites to consumers while still being developer-friendly.

November 29, 2004 in Windows Media Center XP | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

RSS + BitTorrent: a BroadCatching How-To

Engadget ran a great how-to on how exactly you can download tv shows automatically. It's a bit tricky, since the software uses regular expressions, but they provide a bunch of examples to make that easier.

I've often heard this can replace a PVR completely, but if anyone's ever looked around for missed shows online, you can probably agree the quality usually isn't too high and you'll likely have trouble finding what you need unless it's somewhat popular. Still, it's an interesting direction and a few years from now the home recording fans of TV may just fill out the remainder of the TV lineup (and in HDTV no less). I know the networks and movie studios are freaking out over this, so it'll be interesting to see what they do in response to kill this technology.

November 24, 2004 in How-To | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Details from TiVo's Quarterly Conference Call

If you missed TiVo's quarterly con all today, you can get the reply via phone or web:

TiVo Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2005 Results
Host: Mike Ramsay, Chairman and CEO of TiVo
When: Monday, November 22, 2004; 2:00 PM PST
Replay dial-in: 888-203-1112; Password: 976927
Webcast link

Helpful commenter MegaZone posted his notes here and Thomas Hawk posted a review of the call on his site.

TiVo reported sales and membership numbers, but the real meat of the call were the details on new features and directions the company is heading. Here are the main points:

• TiVo To Go is coming by the end of the year. That's great to hear and backs up beta tester info I've gotten recently. It's almost ready for prime time and will definitely come out in the next four weeks. My secret hope is TiVo drops the news tomorrow, to help spur on more holiday sales of the units, especially this big shopping Friday following Thanksgiving.
• They're hot on the DVD burning TiVo. TiVo sold a bunch and feel it's different than anything else in the marketplace. While that sounds great for them, I'm not sure if it's a good long term solution for increased sales. I've always imagined my TiVo like a computer, which gets upgraded every two years, but I think of my DVD player as an object that only gets replaced when it breaks. When we're up to series 4 tivos that can levitate, the humax might not be looking so hot. Still, not many people have DVD burners, so maybe that's a great point at which to combine with TiVo and let them kill two birds with one stone.
• They talked about a standalone HD Tivo. They liked that DirecTV couldn't keep the HD DirecTiVos on the shelves this year, despite the high price, and are thinking of releasing a standalone unit. Of course, not many people will be hip to it if it only records OTA signals, so they'll have to get the cablecard stuff working for Comcast customers.
• Other stuff. They talked about delivering content via broadband, like the Netflix deal, since 80% of their userbase has broadband. I see mentions of the move towards advertising revenue, but not nearly as much as in the CEO's talk a couple weeks ago.

Overall, sounds like TiVo's working on a lot of cool stuff coming soon, with more on the horizon for them. [thanks Thomas and MegaZone]

November 22, 2004 in News, SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

PTVUpgrade releases network hacks for Series 2 DirecTiVo

PTVupgrade, a site that has been around for years selling pre-upgraded TiVo hard drive kits and upgrade services, has recently started work on a package for hacking DirecTV Series 2 TiVos, called PTVnet. The current Series 2 DirecTiVo hardware can run all the applications the standalone hardware can, but DirecTV never released the 4.0 OS to their customers. To let those users make the most of their crippled hardware, PTVnet will make upgrades and hacking easy by selling a pre-built hard drive ready to drop into a DirecTiVo box.

It sounds a lot like the Sleeper ISO method in this guide to hacking a Series 2 DirecTiVo I pointed to last month. My guess is that they have taken all the best and most useful tools out there in the hacking community, and baked them into these drives, ready to drop in with no muss and no fuss.

What's funny is that I just got back from a trip to Fry's to buy a new upgrade drive for my own Series 2 DirecTiVo, which I intend to upgrade tonight, but now I'm not so sure. The DirecTiVo hacking world doesn't have too many tools beyond the Sleeper ISO and it's not that easy to tweak out a drive for all the capabilities. I'm shooting for adding the TiVo 4.0 OS and TiVoWeb to my own drive, and will document it for later republishing on this site. Maybe the PTVUpgrade guys can get me a kit to test out here as well, which I can compare with the "doing it by hand" method. [thanks MegaZone]

November 20, 2004 in Hacks, News, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Interesting study on fast-forwarding

CBS is about to release a study showing that DVR users have better retention of commercial messages than people viewing ads at regular speed. They claim a recall rate of 23% for DVR fast forwarders, but don't mention what lower rate regular TV folks recall ads at.

It's kind of weird on the surface, but makes sense for a few reasons. One is that people using FF are concentrating at 100%, waiting to see the show come back so they can stop, while most folks stuck in 30-second ad jail can let their mind wander or take off to the kitchen for other things. Ads also have a tendency to repeat often (repeat often...often...), and I know when I'm watching shows I can spot that same damn weight loss pill ad for serious dieters and that same ad for Chili's that comes on at each break. I also suspect we're used to decades of ads displaying images at a certain rate and a certain pace, and I wouldn't be surprised if a psychologist would say the super quick cuts seen during FF would be more jarring and memorable in the end. [via MarketingVox and Mike] 

November 19, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

PVR Comparisons

PVR Comparisons is a great site for information and (best of all) screenshots of many popular PVR models available today. I'm often asked by people if they should go with their cable company's free or cheap recorder or pony up the dough for a TiVo, and I usually list the pros and cons of the decision, but this site serves as a great information resource for the plethora of choices. They cover all aspects of each unit including capabilities, cost, and features as part of every review. This master feature chart is a good overview of everything out there.

I had no idea what the comcast DVR looked like until I saw this (ack, the colors! the fonts! man, that's an ugly UI). It's an exhaustive resource without equal, and I certainly hope they keep updating it.

November 19, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Behind the website: when you're at the helm of a shitstorm

The media blog has a good post looking at how the TiVo ad meme grew from this site and kind of got out of hand. I feel bad about it -- on the one hand TiVo is a company and technology that changed my life and that I love, but I thought the original point of bigger ads while you avoid ads is a bad feature for customers. When I meant this was big news, I mean in terms of the TiVo UI, not in terms of how evil TiVo was being. Now that things kind of got nuts, I wanted to explain how it happened.

The backstory
I was really surprised that my little teaser post started such a controversy. On Monday, a LA Times reporter called me, told me basically that TiVo was going to have huge banner ads whenever you hit fast forward, and asked what I thought of it. I was taken aback, since it didn't sound at all like the TiVo I loved, but that was all the info I had to go on.

I knew it would be big news and I still couldn't believe it, but I didn't want to scoop the reporter. I hadn't posted anything substantial at PVRblog in a while, so I thought I'd put a small teaser meant to be like "hey, big news coming tomorrow that will be kind of bad and people might flip out." It's tough to think about this stuff in hindsight, knowing what we now know, but I didn't think it'd be such a self-fulfilling prophecy. But on the other hand, I could tell it would be a big thing, much bigger than the gold star showcase ads that everyone freaked out about a couple years ago (which I thought people totally went overboard on -- I actually watch about 75% of them).

The "goldstar" ads on TiVo Central -- once thought to be the death of TiVo

A few hours later, the article came out and had a few more details, but still was short on particulars. What I didn't know was that the TiVo Community boards were all abuzz and well on the road to freakout before the rest of the web.

The Backlash
So when the article came out, I made the post. I didn't want to totally flip out about it, but I did want to make a point out of the fact it is pushing ads at the exact point where you're trying to skip them, and how that doesn't quite jibe with how TiVo has operated in the past (it never gets in the way of letting you get around ads). The image I made in five minutes probably didn't help matters, and my "no longer tivo your way, it's tivo their way" was me trying to write a bit too much drama. From there, it got taken up by a zillion other blogs including slashdot. I've been blogging on other sites for over five years now, and know how reactionary we bloggers can be. I should have considered that before I got the ball rolling.

Days later, we know quite a bit more than the original reporter's rumors. tivopony has cleared up a few misconceptions, and it'll likely be built upon a feature already present in TiVo, what they call IPreview, a way they let you know you can record a program while watching a commercial, like this:

Hit thumbs up to get more info about a commercial, as seen today in TiVo

The Conclusion
Basically, it's going to be like the current feature, but instead of that thumbs up, you'll see something maybe 1/8th to 1/4 of the screen. Still kinda sucky, but I'm coming around to it being a necessary evil. I still wish TiVo wouldn't do this, but I know they have to make a buck to survive, so in the biggest picture sense, in a way this for users, so that TiVo will stick around. I'm not sure how many advertisers will adopt this, or how helpful it will be, but I'm curious what the final version looks like.

As much as I had a part in this whole mess, when I started noticing all the people saying they weren't going to buy a tivo, would think about selling their TiVos, and even trying to start a class action lawsuit against TiVo (for what exactly, I don't know), I knew things steamrolled out of control, and I'm kind of sad to know I was part of getting this backlash started. If I could do it all over again with a more level head to calm the troops, I certainly would, but I had so little info to go on and now that more has come to light it's not as bad as I once thought.

I'd hate to see blogs get known for reactionary authors (if it's not too late already), and I wish I had more interactions with TiVo HQ. I should have immediately contacted their PR folks after talking with the Times to get more backstory, because it was just too awful to believe. I hope TiVo and other companies embrace bloggers like me in the future, and don't keep us at arms length, or feel compelled to apease us to prevent future flameouts. We love the company and could have guessed the backlash was going to be big days ahead of its release. If you read this far, hopefully you understand why things got to where they are and it's my hope this whole thing blows over.

The bright side
TiVo ToGo is rumored to be coming out in December (I'd say it's almost for sure), and everything I'm hearing from testers is that it's fantastic and quite easy to use. I can't wait for it and hope it comes to my DirecTiVo, though I'm not holding my breath.

(Screenshots courtesy of the excellent PVR Comparisons site.)

November 18, 2004 in Op-Ed | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack

TiVopony drops some details

User and TiVo employee "tivopony" drops into the TiVo Community Forum every now and then to give official company policy on a whole host of things. It's always been one of the great things about TiVo, that they embraced an active user community while at the same time empowering employees to speak candidly about their product.

Last night, tivopony posted some details in the thread about the possible new ads in TiVo. He clears up a lot of speculation that's come up here and elsewhere, about how the feature will look and act and what will and will not happen to the TiVo featureset in general.

The highlights:

• TiVo knows when commercials start and stop using hidden tags
• They will be similar to the current "thumbs up on this ad for more info" feature, but be larger and graphical
• they won't be full screen, so you'll be able to see around them
• the ads will only be tied to the commercials you're skipping past. So no generic commercials over others
• no ads when you pause
• the generic data they may sell to networks and advertisers will remain anonymous and pooled with everyone else's data

It's good to hear a somewhat official word from someone at TiVo HQ, though I still think most fears would be assuaged if they released a screenshot somewhere so folks could see what it looks like.

November 18, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Unhappy user Haughey" on NPR

Earlier today I was interviewed by an NPR show called Marketplace, for a segment on recent TiVo news such as the new ads and the macrovision change. TiVo head of legal Matthew Zinn and I got a few quick quotes. Here's the ~90 second segment:

NPR on TiVo (1.5Mb, MP3 file)

As with all these radio things I do, a ten minute balanced, nuanced conversation becomes one or two quick cuts to fit the story, but it wasn't too bad in this case.

I've been reserving final judgment on the ads until I got to see them. Well, someone at TiVo did finally show me some screenshots of the ads in action, but I was sworn to secrecy and can't display them here. Suffice to say that I was expecting something really subtle in the tivo UI but they looked very beta and looked like someone slapped a giant jpg of an ad poster over a quarter of the screen. They're also showing up in different spots, so you won't be able to tune them out by ignoring one section. But again, that's just in the early beta.

Another blogger connected the dots with a recent post by Mark Cuban. Last month, Cuban noticed  that when you FF is the only time you pay 100% attention to your TV and offered the idea of putting ads there as a freebie to anyone that wanted to act on it. Now, features probably have a very long cycle between idea, testing, and final execution at TiVo, but it's funny that Cuban's idea was floated a month before a rough beta of what he proposed ended up in testing.

November 17, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Senate's new bill may criminalize the fast forward button

Given today's news about TiVo's ads on the fast forward, I can see why they were trying to appease the content industries. Wired News has a writeup about a new crazy copyright bill that throws a bit about skipping commercials in with a ton of other new anti-P2P laws:

However, under the proposed language, viewers would not be allowed to use software or devices to skip commericals or promotional announcements "that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture," like the previews on a DVD.

So the movie industry is doing everything they can to keep people from missing their ads during films. It'd suck to see future DVD players and PVRs that had to disable FF features when a film is playing. There's nothing about it at the EFF right now, but I suspect they'll have lots to say about this soon.

November 17, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (6)

TiVo to add banner ads to service when fast forwarding

So here it is, the story I hinted at earlier (which went to press a night early): TiVo Is No Longer Skipping Past Advertisers.

Coming soon to the standalone TiVo OS: when you hit fast forward to skip past commercials, small banner ads will show up on your screen. You'll be able to click them to get more info, see an informercial, or send your home address details to get more info about a product mailed to you.

I think this is a dark day for TiVo, and this new feature is aimed at pleasing TV Networks and advertisers. I doubt a single customer would ever ask for this kind of feature, and that it happens while you skip commercials just drives the point home. TiVo is no longer TV your way, it's TV their way.

People get TiVos for different reasons, mostly it's for the time shifting nature, but the close second most loved feature has to be the ability to fast forward through ads. The advertising TiVo has added so far has been minimal impact. The commercial showcases that show up on your main menu aren't that bad and often have good ad shorts and information, but pushing that into the main TV watching interface seems like a spectacularly bad move. No longer are the ads an optional thing you can dig for more, they're soon going to be pushed in front of you when you use a key feature of the product.

Now, I haven't seen any actual demos of it in action, and this comment from earlier today claims to be from a TiVo employee and says it'll be tasteful and unobtrusive, but I have a feeling this is a bad precident and it'll get uglier as companies pay more for the primo space.

Also on the horizon: plans to enable purchases via your remote (fine by me, if you're really interested, why not make it easy to buy), and someday letting networks and ad agencies mine the data on tivo use, which I also think is a fine idea if it means better shows and better advertising. But overall, I'm not happy to hear the fast forward button was sold to advertisers today. That was the killer feature for so many, and to see it changed to force ads on customers isn't going to make those customers happy.

November 16, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (103) | TrackBack

WM Recorder - a PVR for streaming media

WM Recorder sounds like a pretty cool new product that lets you capture streaming windows media to a file. Seems like they'll be on shaky legal ground as many pay-only audio and video services use the windows media format solely to get around people doing this. More details on the software in their press release today.

November 16, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Big News Soon

I talked to a LA Times reporter yesterday about some upcoming TiVo features (nope, not TiVo To Go), and all I can say is your jaw will likely drop when you hear about it, but not in a good way. I won't say anything more, but look into tomorrow's LA Times for the full skinny. Heads will roll.

November 16, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBack

El Gato EyeTV 200 DVR review

I've always been fascinated by EyeTV, the software/hardware PVR for macs, but they've never granted me one for review. Powerbook Central got their hands on a new firewire-based model (the previous versions were all USB-based) and wrote up a comprehensive review.

It certainly sounds like it can do a good job, and being integrated with iMovie and other editing apps is an attractive option if you're using TV to build movies on. Combined with their thin client home theater component EyeHome, it sounds like it's pretty easy to share video with the rest of the house. Overall, a slick looking system that sounds like it does the job well.

November 16, 2004 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

TiVo Ready to Fast Forward?

The Harvard Business School has a great write-up of a speech TiVo CEO Michael Ramsay gave there, titled "TiVo Ready to Fast Forward?"

The big question of where TiVo is headed and how they will remain profitable amid so many competitors is the main focus, with Ramsay talking of TiVo as a digital lifestyle hub that is already miles ahead of competitors. An interesting point is made by Ramsay when the subject of TV advertising comes up. He projects a different business model in the years ahead:

Most of the company's revenue today is derived from subscriber payments ($12.95 per month), followed by hardware sales and advertising. In ten years, Ramsay believes, the model will be one-third subscribers, one-third advertising and advertising research, and one-third "premium services" to customers.

They also have plans to move into international markets, which sounds great, if they can price it correctly and work with other TV systems. I know plenty of Canadians, Australians, and Japanese that are dying for an officially supported TiVo in their own country.

November 15, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

How to never miss an episode with BitTorrent and RSS

There's a great new app floating around that automatically downloads and saves your favorite programs via bittorrent. I haven't used TVtorrent before so I'm not sure how complete it is, I bet you'd have to stick to fairly popular shows if you really wanted to get every episode.

People have been building apps with bittorrent and rss before, but this is the first automated app I've heard of that combines the two to grab just the shows you want. Sounds a lot like the app wished for here.

November 14, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBack

Engadget on Microsoft’s Media Center

Engadget has a great op-ed piece today, titled "How Microsoft’s Media Center Will Save Television."

I'm not sure if Windows Media Center 2005 will take off and revolutionize the space as the piece suggests, but they do offer a much more flexible platform than a simple TiVo box in your home. With a Media Center PC and a handheld "extender" to play video and audio, you can watch TV and hear music from any computer in the house and also have the ability to take them on the road with you. I hope MS does encourage competition in this area, as I'd love to see TiVo launch TiVoToGo and maybe enable small video player handhelds to also take part.

November 10, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Skin It!

SkinIt is an interesting new litte startup that offers adhesive skins for your devices. They offer skins for all sorts of phones, handheld games, and PDAs, but I thought it was kind of odd that they offer skins for the front of your TiVo and your remote.

It'll probably make your remote less useful by removing the labels but in return you do get the bling factor. [via red ferret]

November 9, 2004 in Products | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Microsoft braces for crucial TV test

According to Cnet, Microsoft and Comcast are going to make a big announcement on Monday. The article is short on details but hopefully it'll be plans to integrate Media Center 2005 with Comcast's HDTV (so comcast customers won't have to use their branded DVR box), but it'll probably be the unveiling of new set-top boxes for Comcast, powered by MS software. [thanks, Loren!]

November 7, 2004 in Windows Media Center XP | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Dear TiVo... (Updated)

George posts a great idea for TiVo: incorporate HTML on websites with the remote scheduling features at TiVo.com, so that I could say "my favorite shows right now are these five" and readers would have an easy way to send those to their TiVo as things to be taped or season passed.

This would be a real boon to TV review sites, Network TV sites, and anyone that's a fan of television. TiVo, you just launched a referral program that is working great (he says while he awaits the arrival of the special TiVo iPod). Let your fans help become your biggest spokespeople and spread their influence to other TiVo owners. If every TV review/fan site had links to "send a show to your TiVo" how many more TiVos do you think you could sell?

I bet it could be a lot.

update: Woot! This has been added to TiVo's service and site! Check out George's originial post to see the news straight from someone at TiVo.

November 4, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

TiVo's Hot 100

Great to see TiVo exposing all the data they collect into something useful: TiVo's Hot 100 lists the one hundred most popular season passes programmed by users. In a few years, this will easily replace the outdated Nielsen ratings system.

People used to say TiVo owners were mostly nerds with specific viewing habits that differed greatly from normal shows, but although I count myself as a member of that group I see only about 8-10 of my season passes in the entire top 100, and only one in the top 20 is on my season pass list.

Unfortunately, it looks like reality-based TV shows no signs of going away. [via waxy]

November 1, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

TiVo gettin' political?

This election is closer than any in decades, and everyone seems to have politics on their mind these days. Unfortunately, a couple people reported that TiVo isn't immune to this.

I'll preface this by saying these are simply "reports from the field" but keep in mind both people making claims have strong political beliefs and it's possible they're looking for something where none exists.

Claim: Michael Pate pointed me to right wing blogger Wizbang claiming that a F9/11 special was taped without his request. For what it's worth, my TiVo taped the same thing, but as a standard suggested recording, which is to be expected since I watch a lot of documentaries and that show was tagged as such.

Verdict: Since it was a manual recording, someone programmed this in on his TiVo. I'm siding with those in his comments that say it could have been a friend messing with him, as they likely used the manual record so the show couldn't be spotted in the To Do list. I bet it was a friend pulling a prank, and no one has reported anything similar.

Claim: Mike Skallas, a liberal blogger, is claiming his DirecTiVo taped a special Kerry-bashing Fox News Showcase early this morning. He says it shows up as a showcase recording that he can't delete.

Verdict: I'm unsure about this because I have a DirecTiVo myself and it doesn't have any specially taped Fox News program. It's actually not showing the showcases right now, but then I haven't been hooked to a phone line in weeks. I can't back this up, but if it wasn't just a suggested recording and actually showed up in the Showcase space, this could really be a big deal. Perhaps a big enough deal that DirecTV loses some loyal customers over it. Has anyone spotted this on their DirecTiVo this morning? If so, can you take a photo to show it in the showcases?

November 1, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack