Ooh! Gizmodo, a site I've worshipped for quite a while now, has picked up my TiVoToGo-bashing cartoon from yesterday (thanks to Thomas Hawk adding it to his TiVoToGo review). That's kind of funny, but a little sad too. I actually really like TiVo (as I have said many times here), and being associated only negatively with the company is kind of strange. I don't envy TiVo's dilemma in trying to please television networks with their plans for transferring content off the TiVo box, but I maintain that if Sony, JVC, and other VCR-making companies had buckled under the same pressure thirty years ago, we'd never have had the VCR... so it's kind of their own fault that TiVoToGo is a disappointment because they caved (which is a pity, because their customers are the people purchasing their DVRs... not the networks!).

I still don't understand why, if they felt they just had to initiate DRM, they couldn't have done so in a manner that didn't make it impossible for many people to use the resulting video file! Why not just print the customer's account number across the top of the screen every once in a while (or encode it into the interlacing frames). This would allow them to track down people illegally distributing video, but also allow me to play the file wherever I want. But oh no, instead let's go for some goofy transfer shenanigans? Making your customers jump through hoops like that is just not a smart thing to do, because they will abandon you for a solution that's easier and better suits their needs. I know I will.

Hmmm... now that I've thought about it, it's also disturbing that people might think I am a bat-wielding maniac out to kill the little TiVo-man. Regular readers of Blogography realize that my baseball bat is a running joke here, but I'm not sure that's understood by total strangers.