TiVo to charge money for skipping commercials in your own recordings
Posted by dmitrygr 1 day ago
Comments
Comment by hliyan 1 day ago
> "...why I believe you will not escape ads by paying for your content: people who can afford to pay for content are people with money, or people with buying power, in other words, the exact same people advertisers look to target. The more buying power you demonstrate, the more advertisers will target you. So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put them back in..."
Comment by like_any_other 1 day ago
Comment by Obscurity4340 21 hours ago
Comment by HPsquared 1 day ago
Comment by like_any_other 1 day ago
Comment by whateverboat 1 day ago
Comment by ang_cire 23 hours ago
Comment by readthenotes1 18 hours ago
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"
--Mao Zedong.
Comment by like_any_other 6 hours ago
If there were no other power than political, we wouldn't need weapons to fight wars or rebellions.
Comment by tedggh 1 day ago
Comment by surcap526 22 hours ago
Comment by flowrange 1 day ago
It was entirely dictated by TV channels, in order to close the obvious "recording loophole" : instead of watching the show in their VOD app, you could record it, and obviously skip all commercials.
Now you can't anymore. There's even a small dialog when you try that tells you that "Due to a specific demand by <TV Channel>, skipping is a disabled feature."
Comment by 7734128 1 day ago
Comment by rpdillon 21 hours ago
Comment by tencentshill 11 hours ago
Comment by thunderfork 19 hours ago
Comment by snapplebobapple 12 hours ago
Comment by xtiansimon 1 day ago
Comment by shellwizard 15 hours ago
Comment by consp 1 day ago
Wait until you hear of the extended version of this: Some longer whole day live sports on Dutch RTL (and others, it's catching on) have the option for playback but you have to watch from the start and cannot fast forwards in any way. Want to watch the last match? You need to pay more or play several hours of ad ridden TV first!
They are just m3u8 files so extract that, drop it in VLC and you are fine. But 99.9% of the populance will never be able to do that.
Comment by ThatMedicIsASpy 21 hours ago
Comment by thot_experiment 21 hours ago
Comment by soco 1 day ago
Comment by tiagod 21 hours ago
Comment by lovich 11 hours ago
Reference for those who don’t know the meme
Comment by stasomatic 1 day ago
Comment by surcap526 22 hours ago
Comment by OroPla 1 day ago
Only watch Blu-rays and when I do Youtube, I do it through yt-dlp. If there are ads, I'm out. I just can't physically handle this assault on my mind. It's too much.
Comment by geye1234 20 hours ago
Obviously this doesn't apply to classified ads or their electronic equivalents. But what we normally mean by advertising, where people are paid vast sums of money to think very, very hard about how to manipulate you to hand over money for shit you don't need, is vomit-inducing. Billboards are even worse because they deface and degrade the public landscape, and ugly landscapes can contribute to depression, anxiety, irrational anger, and other problems. They are as bad as littering.
What has made people think this is ok?
Comment by parlortricks 9 hours ago
I have ad free household. We treat ads like a poison, like there's a fire. Over the top reaction to shut them down if they creep in. It has taught my own child to avoid ads like the plague (unlike their peers).
I have no idea how people use the Internet with all the ads, no blockers. It is just bonkers, and even at work it is an uphill battle to convince people ad-blockers should be enforced just to protect the business from malicious ads, let alone their own brains.
I want to lobby to have all adverts removed from public transport, but I am unsure how to do that in Australia, but I will work it out.
Comment by driverdan 1 day ago
Comment by account42 2 hours ago
Comment by mopsi 23 hours ago
It's the superior Youtube experience that, funnily enough, is not available on paid platforms like Apple TV.
Comment by Systemmanic 21 hours ago
https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
>iSponsorBlockTV is a self-hosted application that connects to your YouTube TV app and automatically skips segments in YouTube videos using the SponsorBlock API.
Comment by david-gpu 1 day ago
Comment by BLKNSLVR 1 day ago
Comment by someguynamedq 1 day ago
Comment by Mateon1 1 day ago
Comment by shellwizard 15 hours ago
Comment by parlortricks 9 hours ago
Comment by mikeweiss 1 day ago
Comment by OroPla 21 hours ago
Thinking about it... product placements do introduce an interesting dynamic.
TV shows I watched in the past often went out of their way to change brand names, for example Somy instead of Sony, WacDonalds instead of MacDonalds etc.
This is done to avoid copyright infringement, I think.
But on the other side brands pay to be inserted.
Comment by nickthegreek 23 hours ago
Comment by OroPla 21 hours ago
Yes, I also couldn't watch a Blu-ray in a normal player. Too many ads.
Comment by account42 2 hours ago
Comment by ProllyInfamous 18 hours ago
I knew the Tivo employee that coded the GUI button for "play a random recorded episode" (circa 2010). He/Nate left there ~2012, when it seemed to be on its last gasps of relevency.
An unrelated-shoutout to all us "Papered Trees," from waybackwhen... boy did we watch some recorded television, stoned.
Comment by V99 1 day ago
Comment by jjav 1 day ago
Certainly that's my reaction that made me click on this. Hard to believe.
Never used TiVo but I ran a MythTV box for a long time, it was really awesome. But it's been ~15+ years or so haven't used it. Can't believe TiVo still exists.
Comment by dspillett 1 day ago
Not for long. They stopped making hardware a while ago, this feels like the last ditch attempt to find a new business model that works, before it doesn't and what is left of the company is bought and asset stripped (the key remaining asset likely being what data they hold about their customers).
Comment by nottorp 1 day ago
Comment by dspillett 4 hours ago
Comment by pjc50 1 day ago
At the very basic level you can have the AI spot when ads are playing and mute them for you. Used to be easily done with loudness and various other in-band signals.
Comment by avaer 1 day ago
When the enshittification hits AI, your AI will magically develop the ability to politely refuse such a request.
You could hack together your own solution (like you can today), but most people won't and that's the point.
Comment by HPsquared 1 day ago
Comment by latexr 1 day ago
It’s like smacking a tennis ball to the other side of the court and immediately thinking you won, completely ignoring there’s a person on the other who’ll just smack it back.
It boggles the mind how people still fall for the promises of these giants about what a wonderful world they’ll create and all the amazing things you’ll be able to do. Whoever was caught off guard by (for example) LLM providers introducing ads hasn’t been paying any attention.
Comment by darkwater 1 day ago
Comment by pell 1 day ago
Comment by walrus01 1 day ago
Comment by tokai 1 day ago
Comment by walrus01 21 hours ago
https://www.google.com/search?&q=xbox+one+2013+controversy
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/19/xbox-one-...
Comment by skinfaxi 14 hours ago
Comment by reedf1 1 day ago
Comment by Leonard_of_Q 1 day ago
In the end you'll win this war, maybe not in the way you envisioned but win it you will by avoiding 'content' altogether. There is more than enough to read, listen to, see and do that you don't need 'content' to keep you satisfied. Drop it like the lukewarm turd it is and you'll be better off while they can hide their ads where the sun don't shine.
Source: living ad- and 'content'-free for decades
Comment by dudisubekti 1 day ago
Comment by Leonard_of_Q 1 day ago
Comment by retsibsi 1 day ago
edit: actually, and this is just a tangential point, I don't think 'content' covers plays or other live experiences. It's usually screen-based, and the main possible exceptions are things that are almost interchangeable with their screen-mediated forms, like books or magazines.
Comment by itake 1 day ago
On iOS, I see ads for paying for iCloud.
Entering my own apartment, the elevator has ads blasting on the tv.
Wont even start on Windows or web browsers.
Comment by Leonard_of_Q 1 day ago
There's your problem, you rented a terminal managed by the fruit factory so they get to decide who the thing serves. Either "jailbreak" the thing or get a Google-free Android device with an AOSP-derived distribution on it. I have the latter and I don't see any ads.
Windows... same thing. Avoid it if you can and yes, you can unless your employer forces it upon you. In that case see if you can use the LTSP version since that isn't as laden with spy- and adware as the regular versions.
Browsers? Firefox or one of its derivatives help to get rid of ads and other nuisances. I don't see any ads on either mobile or X-top, they don't seem to make it through the combination of network, host and application-level filtering. Those filters just work without needing maintenance, you just need to put them in place.
As to that elevator blasting ads you're more or less on the same situation. The only way to avoid that would be to make sure you manage your own environment. Doing so is much more involving than changing from a fruit phone to something under your own control. I live on a farm in the Swedish countryside where ads just don't seem to thrive, I understand this isn't for everyone but if you're serious in wanting to escape there'll be something similar available in whatever country you call your own.
Comment by itake 21 hours ago
I can’t develop apps to the AppStore without an iOS device, which is a source of income for me.
Degoogled androids have issues with push notifications and banking apps
There isn’t an AirPod pro experience on Google free android.
If my iphone breaks, it’s super easy for me to buy a new one and recover from a backup while I travel.
Comment by account42 2 hours ago
Comment by metalman 1 day ago
Comment by sublinear 1 day ago
I agree with you otherwise, though.
Comment by saturn8601 1 day ago
Also hate clickbait title cards? Theres now an extension to remove those as well: https://dearrow.ajay.app/
This SponsorBlock extension also integrates with yt-dlp so downloaded videos can have ads stripped in the final video. That way you don't even have to ever go to youtube itself. The war isn't over yet and people must keep fighting back.
Comment by fercircularbuf 1 day ago
Comment by ZaoLahma 1 day ago
Comment by PlunderBunny 1 day ago
Comment by TitaRusell 1 day ago
The future is unfortunately propaganda and brain rot.
Comment by Freak_NL 1 day ago
Comment by nkrisc 1 day ago
Comment by grishka 1 day ago
Comment by theage 1 day ago
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tivyskip/ [1] https://github.com/relaxo-player/TivySkip-extension
Comment by Steve44 1 day ago
I had their Tivo box until a couple of years ago when the forced an "upgrade". The new box has uch better hardware but the software was a leap backwards.
Regarding ads, on recorded programmes I can fast forward through them. It's not a direct skip but can jump +30 seconds at a time.
When viewing through any of the channel apps most of them used to allow skipping, but over the past few months it's now blocked on all of them I think. They do tell you how many adverts there are in each block and how long the one is, such as "2/10 29 seconds to go". Unfortunately they don't tell you the total length of the break, some sections are just a few seconds.
Comment by jonhohle 22 hours ago
That said, I paid for a lifetime subscription for a specific feature set. I’m sure there terms allow them to turn it into a brick without having to compensate me. They seem to want to get rid of their non-corporate customers anyway, so maybe this is how they do it.
Comment by KevinMS 1 day ago
Comment by wodenokoto 1 day ago
Like, it has always been advertised as record shows and skip commercials. When they said skip commercials in the early 2000s, did they just mean fast forward?
Comment by KevinMS 1 day ago
Comment by lakkal 19 hours ago
Comment by Mashimo 1 day ago
Comment by toilet 1 day ago
Comment by someguynamedq 1 day ago
Comment by rpdillon 21 hours ago
Comment by amelius 1 day ago
Can we please just ban them to yellow pages only? (Where we can watch them on __our__ terms, not __their__ terms)
Comment by bell-cot 1 day ago
Vs. modern ads are far more like cheap-at-first drugs. Similar to dirt cheap printers with ever-more-expensive consumables, E-Z financing plans that nobody reads the fine print for, and politicians who conveniently forget all their wonderful-sounding promises the moment they're elected.
Comment by _superposition_ 2 hours ago
Comment by xiaodai 1 day ago
Comment by tech234a 1 day ago
Comment by andrewstuart 1 day ago
Comment by rootsudo 1 day ago
The old dvrs were great for old pata hdd that you could individually RMA.
God I’m old.
Comment by fithisux 1 day ago
Intuitively, without any analyses I predict the opposite will happen. But they may have real data supporting their decisions which I do not have.
Comment by tyffanypastecf 1 day ago
Comment by surcap526 22 hours ago
Comment by kotaKat 1 day ago
Comment by chrisjj 1 day ago
Deceptive and false title.
True title is: TiVo Plans to End Free Automatic Commercial Skipping in November, Tests Paid Premium Replacement Service
Comment by Ariarule 21 hours ago
Comment by theginger 1 day ago
Comment by gblargg 1 day ago
Comment by agileAlligator 1 day ago
Comment by tancop 1 day ago
At that point you get regulations designed to make competing with them expensive or risky, like DMCA or submarine patents. They also legalize union busting and get courts to declare that you can get fired for any reason and getting pressured to sign an unfair contract is your fault.
The only thing you can really do against it as a government is making sure nobody ever captures a majority of any market and workers have ultimate control over their company. But that system is a form of market socialism so you can't really call it capitalist anymore.
Comment by imtringued 1 day ago
If capitalism is the pathological obsession that capital should always net a positive return, then it is incompatible with free markets by definition.