10 thoughts on “TiVo’s Not-So-Big Announcement and Sketchy Partners”

  1. It’s not a bad feature if you have a child who you want to protect from the junk on TV. Obviously, without a child this feature is kind of useless. I had hoped that they would mention somehting about the Series 3 TiVo :(.

  2. That’s the big announcement? Talk about weaksauce.

    I know nothing of Common Sense Media but the PTC just plain sucks, this one tiny group is responsible for 99.8% of all FCC complaints and in effect controls what all of the U.S. is allowed to watch on broadcast TV or listen to on the radio.

    At least this service seems to aim put the control in the hands of individual parents, rather than have the PTC decide (more than they already do anyways) still this seems like a problem in search of a solution, the TiVo Parental controls are already effective at making sure that my kids don’t watch shows they shouldn’t like Family Guy or South Park.

    I can’t help but be highly skeptical of anything that the PTC is involved in, From my perspective TiVo mighty as well have announced a new partnership with Macrovision or the MPAA, I don’t even need to know what it’s about to know that it’s not something that I’m going to like.

  3. OMG… ReplayTV has ALWAYS had this feature in their Zones area! holy crap. I can’t believe no one checked into how awesome ReplayTV was before jumping on the Tivo bandwagon.

  4. MuDoggy so ReplayTV has always had the ability to hand over control of what your kids watch to a fringe group of ultra-conservative super-far-right-wing nutjobs who can’t keep their nose out of other peoples private lives? Wow I never noticed that “feature” on my parents ReplayTV (before they put it on a shelf and bought TWO TiVos).

  5. I have had TiVo since it came out. I currently have 3 series 1 TiVo’s which are still going strong. While i would like to get a series 2 for its slimmer appearance I won’t. Why? Alll 4 of my series 1 TiVo’s are hacked. The enhancements that the TiVo community have made are far better then the folks at TiVo have made. TiVo web where you can connect to the TiVo and schedule programs. TiVo dailymail where it will e-mail you on a user selected frequency what programs are going to record, what programs are going to expire and other information. Why haven’t the folks at TiVo embrace these TiVo community made features? Perhaps if they did they would attract more loyalty and perhaps attract those who want to see their features on their own TiVo or rolled out to every TiVo.

  6. All,

    Get over the ultra-conservative…blahblahblah stuff.

    First of all, it’s configurable. Second, I love the idea of having somebody providing me with a list of stuff as a resource. It’s no different than what you get with filtering software – it provides a list, and you can modify it.
    Third – personal opinion – I’ll take the parents group over anything Hollywood recommends anyday.

  7. Not sure where rthe Series1/Series2 debate fits in whith this but the answer to your question is simple: TiVo has to make a good faith effort at stopping the hacking of their boxes or Hollywood will sue them into oblivion like they did with ReplayTV. I doubt very much that TiVo as a compnay really cares if people load their own stuff, but they can’t endorse it for legal reasons.

    AFAIK it’s still possible to hack a Series2 like you can a Series1, it’s just considerably more complicated to do so (not sure, my TiVo Series2 is still unmodified).

    Oh and mr blahblah I suspect that many of us who disagree with this also disagree with filtering software that relies on a thrid party list, I know for sure that I do.

    I know it’s an amazing concept for some people, but I like to ya know, take personal responsibility for what my kids watch on TV (or what they do on the Internet, or what video games they play), I watch the shows they watch and make sure they are appropriate. Maybe it would be easier to just let someone else decide but that’s the lazy approach to parenting.

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