@MacBandit: That's what "page down" is for.

Besides...per the story: "even alongside product placements during live shows." No thanks. I've had enough of that while watching Family Guy on TBS and having my show paused by a giant Bill Engvall.

Jeff Martin

Haha!! Joke's on Tivo!! Who watches Oproh or Letterman??

And I just ended my Daily Show season pass. Now if only I could get rid of those silly banner adds...

Kuato

@Jeff Martin:

Yeah right. Your Comcast box the one I had and threw out a window then shot repeatedly can only display 5-6 channels on it's guide do to banner ads. At least my Tivo can show me 10 channels.

This Tivo ad thing they are talking about isn't like they are adding commercials they are adding links in the commercials. So if you there is a commercial for toothpaste running you will be able to click a button and go directly to a site to buy it. Call it smart commercials. You can still fast forward.

MacBandit

@DigitalReaper:

If you're paying $30/month you're getting ripped! I pay $8/month per unit.

MacBandit

I still have my gen1 Tivo that I got back in oh, 2002 I think, with the lifetime subscription... It's been in my closet for the last 5 years.

bucklefilledbird

Tivo + Commercials? Are you kidding? I'm not selling my tivo, I'm drowning it in a burlap sack in a river.

I want to punch that little tv symbol right below the smile.

Darrone

Aaand we're one step closer to "Minority Report"-style ads.

Suddenly my crippled Comcast DVR doesn't seem so bad, even though it records "The Daily Show" five times a day.

Jeff Martin

This wouldn't bug me if i didn't already pay 500.00 for the hardware and another 30 a month for the stupid subscription. there shouldn't be a single ad anywhere on the box for these prices.

DigitalReaper

We already get those overlay ads on everything else.. ugh. Whose idea was it to make ads that cover 1/4 of the program you're trying to watch?

brainwav

I'd rather watch commercials than watch commercials during a program. I'm glad I don't own one of these things.

Hectorvex

WTF?! Don't I pay for this service to get away from ads? Why are they devaluing their product?

SpcmnSpf

Every time this happens with Tivo everyone FREAKS THE FUCK OUT. Then they implement it politely and no one even notices it. I pay 16.95 a month and am infinitely happier than my local TWC DVR friends. I'm not giving up something that works so well just because of a little advertising or else I would've dumped my TV years ago.

zingbot

@UtahJ:
Dude if you find a way to make your own DVR with 2+ cablecard enabled HD tuner/capture card, intelligent recording logic, reliable listings and channel lineup updates, and support for switched digital video for less than $300 please let me know!

Bluesk1d

Yeah Tivo is crossing a line here with me. This too will cause me to reassess my relationship with Tivo. Bad move.

axiomatic

When this begins, I will be contacting TiVo customer service to find out when I can expect my 50% reduction in monthly fees.

Bluesk1d

When will the revolt begin?!?! We're paying $40 to watch friggin' commercials at the movie theater, and now we're paying TIVO to expose us to even more advertising. I bought my TIVO HD about a year ago, and as soon as I saw the advertising, I knew I had made a mistake. I will not be renewing my contact. Time to build my own.

UtahJ

If the ads were unobtrusive, I realistically wouldn't have a problem with a small note that I could press a button on a remote to buy a book that I'm hearing about. Of course, the scenario where the topic of discussion is an inexpensive product is not common, save for talk shows. That said, Unbox doesn't seem to work properly in my experience, despite having a robust internet connection and wired Ethernet. Certainly TiVo has to be careful about alienating its customers, which is noted well in the page of comments here.

Schalliol

If its only ads or commercial links in the Tivo menu then I don't have a problem. I rarely see em anyways.

However - if a tivo message pops up in the middle of watching Heroes with a Bills Samurai Sword Emporium advert with a "press thumbs up to purchase your own sword now!" - tivo will be pitched faster than you can say "download the content from usenet".

regexp

but that defeats the point of buying a tivo

urbanturban666

@friendslikeJimRome:
True during commercials but it's this part:
during commercials and --->even alongside product placements during live shows<---.

Denver_80203

I don't see what the big deal is, TIVO has always has ads and commercial links.

friendslikeJimRome

I don't mind anything that Tivo has done this far but, ads or "press thumbs up for more.." during a program would be crossing the line.

Denver_80203

Seriously, I like my TiVo, but the advertising is getting out of hand. I'd switch to something better, but there isn't anything better.

Also, the menus are cluttered and not thought through very well and half the menu items load for a full minute on my S2 box.

Right now all DVR's are bad. Just like all mobile phones were bad before the iPhone. Why can't anyone figure this out?

centipedex

Advertising should only occur when the person who has to view the ad is getting something for free.

Advertising should be a non-verbal agreement between the advertiser and the viewer. There should be some benefit to the person who sees the ad. For example, you want to watch a network TV show for free? you have to watch a commercial.
You want to use that website that you love, without paying a subscription fee. The advertising makes that possible.

As soon as you start paying for a product, there should be no advertising.
10 bucks for a movie ticket, and they force you to watch a pepsi commercial? That is unacceptable.

Cable used to have no commercials, because you pay for it.

If you pay for Tivo, commercials are not acceptable.

But no one will do anything about it. We'll just sit here like sheep and take whatever crap they throw at us.

suburbancowboy

If it's bad then they will loose my subscription. I agree with Sakko on this though... Also if enough people complain and threaten to stop paying them, they will rethink their strategy.

hagrun

I agree on paper it sounds horrid but for the most part Tivo has implemented ads in a not so obtrusive way. In particular Bluesk1d has a point, Tivo's are feature rich, where the cableco DVR's are horrid on many accounts.

I am about to buy in to the HD world (sad because of the Giz article saying things are going to drop in price shortly :( ), and I plan to do so with a Tivo HD as my DVR of choice.

I agree people have a point that it sucks when you pay for something and still get ads. I would throw a couple bucks more on my sub if I could cut out ads altogether. But that is the way of the world man, don't know what else to say. People bone you with ads at every turn. Look at tournament fishing, a bunch of dudes sitting on a lake with jerseys and boats coated in ads. Freakin unreal.

sakko

$300 sounds a little low for a decent PVR, but you can easily build your own PVR for a little more. Load Ubuntu + MythBuntu and you will have a system with so many features that you will never want to go back to anything else!

And nobody's uploading my viewing habits or downloading commercials.

$16.95 a month for listings? How about $20 a YEAR from Schedules Direct?

SalParadise

Hell yes I will dump their ass if anything pops up during a recorded or live tv show. They can do whatever they want during commercials, but show time is a different story.

wkm001

[mythtv.org]
[gbpvr.com]
[www.team-mediaportal.com]

Open Source Software means never having to deal with ads.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

@ChootinDaChit: No, protectionist cable monopolies mean never being able to use a CableCard. And that's one reason I'm not going HD yet.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

I'm sorry Tivo but we can't go on like this anymore. I'm sure I will find someone to love again. I just need time. It's not me, it's you.

Boomstick

Open Source Software means never being able to use a CableCard.

ChootinDaChit

Jesus, man. Thanks for the info... okay new plan. Use TivoHD and hope they don't screw the pooch on ads!

Damn I thought DRM was dumb, that's just ridonkulous!

sakko

@sakko: I should note that this doesn't make building an HD HTPC of your own impossible -- only difficult and circuitous. There are retail HD tuners out there, but you'll need to hook a set-top box to it to decrypt your channels, and use an IR blaster to control the box. As well, you'd better be sure that your PC has plenty of power to encode and decode HD streams simultaneously, since, unlike those folks lucky enough to use CableCard, you won't be able to just record the already-formatted-and-compressed digital cable stream.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

@sakko: Basically, the guys behind CableCard refuse to license any tuner for retail sale, citing "piracy" concerns. The only CableCard tuners available now are built into high-end "approved" HTPCs that tend to start around the $2000 mark. Oh, and did I mention that they'll only make drivers for "approved" OS's and software, the only one of which so far is Windows Vista and its accompanying Windows Media Center? They won't even release specs so that the open source community can make the damn things work with other OS's.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

Hey can you guys elaborate on the cable card thing, I know Comcast is ready to rent me two cable cards for my TivoHD.

I assume you guys are talking about mediapc apps though, are they completely unable to use cablecards? What's the skinny?

A mediapc type setup is my fallback in case Tivo gets dumb.

sakko

I think some of you are crapping the bed too quickly. Yes, more ads aren't good, but the text specifically says "in TiVo's various onscreen menus", meaning it's not going to be popping up on the screen while you're sitting there whacking off to Rachel Ray.

bitgod

suburbancowboy hit the nail on the head. If you're paying a premium, you shouldn't have to endure ads. Period.

skechada

People still use TiVo?

kaosfere

Son of a bitch, TiVo likes money.

crapcakes

@skechada: That's bullshit, and it always has been. It is a bogus argument that people spout repeatedly as if that will make it true.

Now, I know someone is going to be a wanker and find exceptions to the following statements as if that'd invalidate them (I'll give you one already, Consumer Reports doesn't run ads) but they are overwhelmingly true. Magazines have ads, you buy them. Newspapers have ads, you buy them. Most cable and satellite TV has ads, you pay for it. (And any period when cable didn't have ads was long, long ago and very limited. Usually only specific premium channels, even back in the day.) Hell, most books have adds at the end for other books by that author or from that publisher.

Saying "If you pay anything for it them it shouldn't have ads" is idiotic. The real world is not binary. Business models use a mix of revenue streams for multiple reasons, such as keeping down subscription costs or avoiding a monoculture where a problem with one stream could collapse the company completely. TiVo doesn't make anywhere near enough on advertising to support the company without subscription fees. But without the advertising they'd have to charge *more* to subscribers to make up the difference. It isn't like they're profiteering, they're only now approaching sustained profitability and have lost money most of their existence.

*Some* of their revenue comes from advertising, some from IP licensing, some from technology licensing (Comcast, TiVo Australia, TGC, etc), and some from subscriptions. Take away any of those and the remaining items would need to compensate. That shouldn't be hard to comprehend.

The fact is TiVo can't make enough from subscriptions alone to be profitable, not without charging more - and that could be self-defeating as it would discourage sales. TiVo needs to build their other revenue streams, such as advertising, to become a profitable, sustainable business.

And if you can even consider using MythTV, etc., then you're not in TiVo's target market anyway. It doesn't really matter if the geeks switch to something else, they're not a significant market slice. Odds are if you're reading Gizmodo you're not part of TiVo's core market.

It is more than a bit silly to go off on a rant about how terrible it is when you haven't even seen the implementation. Personally I'm excited to have this, I've been saying for years that they need to do something just like this. As long as it is unobtrusive I'll be happy to have it, and I'll probably use it. There have already been times when I've gone and tracked down a CD after hearing music on a program, or a book after hearing about it. And I tend to buy from Amazon anyway, so I'd be cool to just order the CD with a few clicks without having to go through the hassle later.

MegaZone

And if you can even consider using MythTV, etc., then you're not in TiVo's target market anyway. It doesn't really matter if the geeks switch to something else, they're not a significant market slice. Odds are if you're reading Gizmodo you're not part of TiVo's core market.

@MegaZone: You know, the Macheads say the exact same thing, and it's just as irritating as when they do it. Apparently, if you know stuff about how the product works, and have any criticism about it on a technical level, you should just shut up because they only market their product for mindless sheeple anyway. You're not in the core demographic, so you're not allowed to have an opinion. How retarded is that?

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak