Now requiring a 1-year service contract, TiVo is gradually pricing themselves out of business, and it's more than a money issue for users. When it becomes too costly in terms of convenience and freedom, subscription growth will slow, and hardened TiVo nuts like me will stop using their settop boxes in lieu of MythTV and other Open Source platforms.
The first big news out of the TiVo camp in a long time was their decision to allow networks to "red flag" shows, which can limit when a program can be watched, how long it can be saved to the hard drive and whether it can be copied using the TiVo-To-Go feature.
TiVo has been extremely easy to use, and that has been its major selling point all along; no one who tried it didn't love TiVo. But the limitations just got to be too great for this to be a viable product in my home. One example is its proprietary file format. I want standard MPEG files that you can import/export/edit and save as long as I damn-well feel like it.
My loyalty for TiVo is gone. I predict that I will be using MythTV in 2006.
BetaNews | TiVo Institutes 1 Year Service Contracts
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