TiVo Nearly Has IPTV

TiVo Won't Transfer Downloaded Content

TiVo won’t trans­fer con­tent that has been down­loaded over the inter­net. Click image for full view.

Just recent­ly, TiVo announced they would pro­vide week­ly down­load of prod­uct reviews by CNET. While not near­ly like hav­ing C|Net back on the air again (I miss Richard Hart and Gena St. John talk­ing tech on C|Net Cen­tral), it was pret­ty cool to be get­ting their con­tent via my TiVo. TiVo has also announced a down­load­able doc­u­men­tary about Hong Kong movie stunt­ment called Red Trousers (the film, not the stumt­ment). All this is very cool, and I’ve signed up to receive both. I actu­al­ly watched the first C|Net review of portable dig­i­tal music devices ear­li­er today. It was breif, but no less so that most tele­vi­sion reviews. The pro­gram was about twelve min­utes, total, I think. Now, just to be clear, so every­one under­stands. Nor­mal TiVo con­tent is sim­ply record­ed over the cable to the tele­vi­sion, just like a VCR would. This con­tent, how­ev­er, was down­loaded over the inter­net straight to the TiVo, like you might down­load some­thing to your PC or Mac.

Now, here comes the bad news. (P.S. — There’s always bad news with TiVo).

When fir­ing up my TiVo Desk­top to trans­fer some pro­grams (over my new, secure Home­Plug net­work con­nec­tion), I found that I was­n’t able to trans­fer the C|Net con­tent. I’m not say­ing I was even want­i­ng to trans­fer that, but what about when they have some IPTV that I do want to save. If they’re not going to let me save a twelve minute long C|Net piece, some­thing tells me there’s lit­tle chance I’ll be able to trans­fer and burn-to-DVD Red Trousers or any oth­er full lenth film. What if, in the future, I can buy con­tent via an online store to have down­loaded to my TiVo? Oh, say, like an iTunes Video Store? Will they let me have that con­tent to keep, or even for more than a week? TiVo, do the right thing here: let the con­sumers have the stuff. They’ll love you more for it.

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

2 comments

  1. Most like­ly, TiVo has a con­tract to make spe­cif­ic con­tent avail­able from a spe­cif­ic provider. This dis­tri­b­u­tion con­tract prob­a­bly includes stip­u­la­tions about adver­tis­ing rev­enue shar­ing (if any adver­tise­ments are shown) and restric­tions about how the con­tent may be used. 

    Big dif­fer­ence between act­ing as a con­tent provider and cre­at­ing a prod­uct that helps peo­ple max­i­mize “fair use” aspect of copy­right law. What hap­pens when some­one is con­trac­tu­al­ly bound to pro­vide con­tent with spe­cif­ic con­straints, even though “fair use” aspect of copy­right law is still valid? If TiVo ignores the con­tract providers con­tract, the provider could pull the plug on this exclu­sive content. 

    If anoth­er com­pa­ny were to act as an IPTV dis­trib­u­tor of CNET’s con­tent, and you had a sub­scrip­tion to that dis­trib­u­tor, TiVo will most like­ly upgrade their box­es to work with that con­tent the same way it works with any­thing it can sched­ule now.

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