Hassell doesn’t like TiVo, or, are we hostage to the TiVo’s crap?The TiVo - Yours or Theirs?. In the latest "big media against their customers" story, the BBC network decided to push an episode of a critically acclaimed yet rarely viewed sitcom to all television viewers subscribing to the TiVo service. It begs the question of who controls the choice of what to watch: the customer, who pays his hard-earned money to allow the TiVo to assist him in maximizing his entertainment time, or mass media and The Networks, who manage to perceive the very people that put them in business as crooks, theifs, and vandals. [by way of Meerkat: An Open Wire Service] Jonathan Hassell’s argument is a rather emotional one, and insupportable by fact. My TiVo got material of the same sort that I entirely enjoyed, as well as material I did not care for. As long as it never interrupts any show of mine, I am perfectly content with it. And it never interrupts any shows of mine. In fact, when I am watching a show at 4:30 in the morning, the TiVo politely asks me whether it can record its special content material, such as Francis Ford Coppola talking about what dreck ordinary television is and how the TiVo cuts through it (right before the Academy Awards), or the (rather stupid) Feng Shui electronics advertisements.
It never records suggestions or special content over scheduled recordings. If Hassell doesn’t know this, then he hasn’t used his TiVo much at all.
As for the “I paid for the full capacity” argument, yes: you paid for the full capacity, and you got it. Your TiVo was rated for thirty hours (at least in my case) and you get that. The fact that they withheld some space for special content has no bearing on that, any more than the fact that they withheld some space for the Linux-based OS. If you don’t like it, wipe the hard drive and put in your own multimedia content-oriented operating system; TiVo provides the source.
Yes, Hassell, what’s on your technology is your business. But if you want to subscribe to the TiVo service, which is what gives you the power to cut through the dreck by downloading television schedules, then you must put up with the special content. You can use your TiVo without the service, and without the weekly calls, it pretty much becomes an easier-to-use VCR: I found this out when my phone company changed local calling convention.
The TiVo is mine, not theirs, but the service for which I paid some $250 is a service, one that I find provides enough useful features that I paid for the lifetime option immediately after the two week trial, rather than paying according to my original plan: monthly for the first three months before making a final decision. It is a service that you can turn off as easily as pulling the telephone jack connecting your TiVo to their schedules. It is a service that Mr. Hassell and upset TiVo owners need not subscribe to.
This is not a big media versus consumer story, it is a personal dissatisfaction of some users with a service for which they paid.
3:38:49 PM 
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