posted 09-15-2005 05:29 PM                    

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There are three categories of copy protection involved here. The TiVo website describes them thusly:

Copy Never - This content is not allowed to be recorded by a TiVo DVR.
7 Day Unlimited - These programs can be recorded and viewed as many times as you like within 7 days of their original recording date.
7 Day / 24 Hours - These programs can be stored for up to 7 days but once you begin watching the show, you must complete viewing within 24 hours.
These restrictions obviously suck. The middle one sucks a lot, the last one sucks even more and the first is the suckiest of all. For those of us who have a TiVo with a built-in DVD burner, there seems to be yet another quite-sucky category, which is that the show can be recorded normally on the TiVo and kept there indefinitely but it cannot be copied onto a DVD. TiVo indicates that a show has a specified restriction by putting a little red flag on its listing. We are told that these will appear only on pay-per-view events and video-on-demand material and that it is almost inconceivable that the broadcast networks will stop us from recording their shows or saving them as long as we want. And at the moment, I do think it's premature to be worried that you won't be able to record or archive The Simpsons or CSI: Boise or Conan O'Brien.

Who should be worried? Well, if I operated a movie theater that depended on current releases, I might start wondering how to convert the place into an Olive Garden. The studios are already making noises about getting rid of the exclusive window for theatrical exhibition and when that happens, a lot of theaters will probably suffer. Ten years ago, the average length of time between the release of a new movie and its availability on home video was around 200 days. Two years ago, it was 180 days and recently, it's been around 136 days, though Sony has put out DVDs of theatrical releases that opened in theaters some 95 days earlier. You don't have to be a statistician to see where this one's going. "Day and date" is the wave of the future, and TiVo is obviously gearing up to deal with that kind of marketing.

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posted 09-15-2005 09:07 PM                    

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TiVo indicates that a show has a specified restriction by putting a little red flag on its listing. We are told that these will appear only on pay-per-view events and video-on-demand material and that it is almost inconceivable that the broadcast networks will stop us from recording their shows or saving them as long as we want.

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posted 09-16-2005 10:14 AM                    

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film
n.
1. A thin skin or membrane.
2. A thin, opaque, abnormal coating on the cornea of the eye.
3. A thin covering or coating: a film of dust on the piano.
4. A thin, flexible, transparent sheet, as of plastic, used in wrapping or packaging.
5a. A thin sheet or strip of flexible material, such as a cellulose derivative or a thermoplastic resin, coated with a photosensitive emulsion and used to make photographic negatives or transparencies.
5b. A thin sheet or strip of developed photographic negatives or transparencies.
6a. A movie.
6b. Movies considered as a group.
7. A coating of magnetic alloys on glass used in manufacturing computer storage devices.

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