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TiVo Series3 DRM glitches in the wild

Ouch: Cnet has an incredible story about DRM blocking HBO and Universal HD programs from playback, seemingly due to some bad digital rights flagging. This kind of thing should never happen to a customer, especially one just trying to watch some TV. Hopefully JVC and TiVo release a fix soon.

It's a shame that studios are so freaked out about piracy of digital content that they have to foist these "features" on end users, which in the end do little but aggravate owners trying to legitimately use their products.

by Matt Haughey October 11, 2006 in News

Comments

Not to mention the development effort they consume on the part of Tivo, who has to be careful about new features for which they have less time anyway thanks to having to comply with stuff like the broadcast flag.

Posted by: David Adams at Oct 11, 2006 3:15:04 PM

I think boing boing said it best
"""
TiVo's problem is a "glitch" but the reason they're having this kind of glitch is that there's a single command that can tell the TiVo to stop listening to its owner. Wouldn't it be better if TiVo didn't build in any technology that attacks its customers?
"""
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/11/tivos_selfdestruct_b.html

Posted by: Jay Graves at Oct 11, 2006 4:04:44 PM

Like TiVo has a choice. The Series3 is a CableCARD host device. CableCARD *requires* DRM support. No DRM, no CableLabs approval. No approval, no CableCARDs. Cory, not for the first time, glosses over the realities of the situation to paint TiVo as the bad guy. TiVo doesn't *like* implementing DRM solutions, they make everyone's life harder - including TiVo's. But without it TiVo would not be able to offer the products the do. No DRM would mean no TiVoToGo - it only got the FCC not because TiVo implemented DRM. No DRM means no CableCARD, so no Series3. No DRM would mean no DVD support - the DVD Forum license mandates Macrovision support.

That's just how it is.

Posted by: MegaZone at Oct 11, 2006 10:43:20 PM

Ya, what Megazone said.

Seriously, this is way more likely to be people's local cable headends messing up with flagging incorrectly, the S3 is doing exactly as it is REQUIRED to do. This is not a glitch.

Posted by: Leo at Oct 12, 2006 7:53:33 AM

Nope, it's not a glitch. TiVo and JVC are the only ones following the rules by the look of it. Those are the rules. Welcome to your new $800 digital media player / digital doorstop. Maybe now people will start to realize what the broadcast flag means...

Posted by: GadgetGav at Oct 12, 2006 1:20:40 PM

This is why I passed up the offer I got to carry my lifetime to a Series 3... I don't NEED HD badly enough to give up other stuff.

Posted by: Jeff at Oct 12, 2006 5:08:02 PM

There's more going on here with the TIVO S3 (in the way of glitches, cough) than this article speaks to.

At the Tivo Community site, S3 owners are complaining that their cable distros are, in fact, not helping (willingly or otherwise) to fix the flagging problems that they deliver - because they don't have the experience in setting those controls for the Cablecard systems.

Additionally, S3 owners are also complaining about partial recordings that may, or may not, (too soon to tell exactly where the fault lies) be related to cable card issues and/or loss of video input signals.

The introduction of DRM and cable card technology into fielded S3s may be producing technical problems not found in lab tests.

Posted by: Daniel at Oct 13, 2006 8:04:29 PM

see also www.businesshackers.com for a similar topic

Posted by: fred at Oct 14, 2006 1:50:01 AM

As long as companies like tivo and msft cave in to the studios and grant them their imaginary rights this will only get worse. The cable operators have NO excuses. CableCard devices are certified by CableLabs, the cable industry standards body. They have only themselves to blame for these issues. Of course they want to field broken technology, it will push users to rent cableco DVR boxs rather than deal with CableCard. The cable industry is against CableCard, and has fought it every step of the way as it threatens their lucrative cable box scam (rent a $300 box for ever at $12/mo. Quite a deal for them). So, you should not be shocked that "certified" and "logoed" devices don't work.

Posted by: Ian at Oct 15, 2006 1:01:26 AM

At the Tivo Community site, S3 owners are complaining that their cable distros are, in fact, not helping (willingly or otherwise) to fix the flagging problems that they deliver - because they don't have the experience in setting those controls for the Cablecard systems.
http://www.qqbq.info/sitemap.htm
Additionally, S3 owners are also complaining about partial recordings that may, or may not, (too soon to tell exactly where the fault lies) be related to cable card issues and/or loss of video input signals.

Posted by: Christian Ter at Oct 16, 2006 2:48:23 AM

This is simply an error with HDCP. It means the host device cannot synch HDCP with the output device. It means the TV doesn't do HDCP. Use component instead.

Posted by: Amanda at Feb 27, 2007 9:59:33 AM

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