03.16UPDATED: HBO’s new miniseries IS locked down for TiVo recording
UPDATE: Original post is now below; Dean emailed back to say, “HBO did in fact broadcast the series John Adams with the same TiVo copy protection that I emailed you about earlier.” This is the first instance I know of in which TiVo is allowing copy protection restrictions to be applied on non-VOD or pay-per-view content. In sum: a sad day for TiVo and the fairest of fair use — the ability to watch a show twice. Here are the screenshots Dean sent:
The red flag indicates that the recording will be deleted after a certain amount of time. Here’s the really unbelievable part:
It wouldn’t even let him watch the recording when it was about to be deleted. Even Apple TV rentals let you finish the movie before it’s nuked. TiVo simply refers to the user to this miserable screed on copy protection.
Wow. This is just bad.
Original post:
I got an email today from a pretty furious Comcast user, who writes:
“This morning, my kids and I decided to watch a TiVo HD recording we made last night of The Making of John Adams. This is the new upcoming mini-series by Tom Hanks and others about the lives and accomplishments of John Adams. When we started watching it, I first found that the TiVo had flagged it for mandatory auto-deletion within a few hours of being deleted, due to ‘copyright policies.’ Hmm – never saw that one before.
After about 5 minutes watching, my oldest son came into the room, and we decided to start it over so he could enjoy it. What I found was something I’ve never seen before and has me pretty frosted. When I backed up to the beginning and attempted to watch it again, TiVo would not allow me to – again stating that it had violated copyright policies. After countless attempts at forward and reverse moves, we found that we could now not watch any portion of the show! I rebooted the TiVo, and found the same thing. No can do – the TiVo/HBO/Comcast programming had locked it from being viewed again! Then as promised at 11:29am EST, it deleted from my hard drive and there was nothing I could do about it.
Have you seen or heard of this one before? I never have and I’m pretty pissed off about it! If this is their clever new version of DRM, I’ll cancel my HBO subscription, never watch another Tom Hanks product, and move on. If this is what I think it is, I believe John Adams would be pretty upset about it. Maybe we should all throw our cable boxes into the Boston Harbor!”
This does, indeed, have me pretty concerned. We know that TiVo has full lockdown capabilities, provided by Macrovision, but the last time it reared its ugly head (users reported a red flag that prevented saving content past a certain date), TiVo assured us all that it was a mistake. And when they rolled out the Macrovision software in 2004, TiVo assured us they were only on board with new DRM rules “as long as the restrictions were limited to pay-per-view and video-on-demand,” and told Wired they “probably” wouldn’t go along with more restrictive content rules that limited consumer choice.
So, is this user’s encounter another mistake of overzealous software and accidental flagging? It pains me to say this, but I doubt it. HBO is not a fan of fair use, and has already put limits on making any copies of its programming (it allows one copy of regular programming and no copies of on-demand content). There have been reports in the past of HBO content failing to record even once on Media Center PCs, and they have petitioned the FCC to allow their video-on-demand content to be labeled as record-never, so that any of that subscription VOD stuff could never, ever be recorded to a DVR. And just last year, HBO CTO Bob Zitter said the only real problem with DRM is the name, which consumers hate. Rename DRM “Digital Consumer Enablement,” he said, and you can better describe all the ways in which HBO will be locking down future content.
In sum, while HBO and Macrovision have, so far, focused their fire on premium or VOD content, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see HBO decide that a particularly high-profile miniseries was a great candidate for copy protection restrictions, and to see Macrovision (with TiVo as the probably unhappy conduit) cheerfully enable restrictions that are inane, consumer-unfriendly, and infuriating.
Do we really need to rinse-and-repeat the rant about DRM, and how it punishes the people who would be your most loyal consumers, assumes we’re all pirates, frequently fails at even “authorized” tasks, alienates users, and is just generally an asinine and outmoded approach to content delivery that will only result in less usage of all products involved, no change in or even an increase in piracy stats, and the dreaded Mockery of the Blogosphere? Apparently we do.
Can anyone else confirm reports of this HBO/TiVo trouble with the John Adams miniseries? I sincerely hope it’s a mistake, but this one really does have all the distinguishing characteristics of a duck.
18 Responses to “UPDATED: HBO’s new miniseries IS locked down for TiVo recording”
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Yet another reason people do what they do to acquire this content from other means. Time to invest in a MythTV box.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:23 am
It would not surprise me in the least that this is true.
I believe the more these things happen, the more people will come to hear about it and the word will once again spread that DRM is bad for the consumer, as it did within the music sector. It wasn’t that long ago that no one had even heard of DRM outside of the tech community and now its common for a service to actually sell music with the added incentive that it is DRM free.
I hope it is only a matter of time before the general public become aware and disgruntled enough to vote with their wallets on these issues around tv and film too.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:31 am
HBO/Tivo/Comcast handcuff their customers – and try on some Newspeak, too…
Interesting post on Molly Wood’s “Culture of Ownership” blog: “HBO is not a fan of fair use, and has already put limits on making any copies of its programming (it allows one copy of regular programming and no copies of……
March 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I didn’t have any problems when I recored the same show a few days ago. I have a TiVo Series3, so I would think I would be subject to the same broadcast flags as a Comcast user.
I’m recording the actual mini-series starting tonight. I’ll be interested to see if there are any extra DRM restrictions on the recording. I feel safe in saying that it will probably be restricted from transfers. Not that I want to watch it on my computer or iPod.
March 16th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Forget TiVo! Leave it, I say. The best course would be to buy a DVR or VCR and plug that into your Television and record with that. Most DVRs and VCRs support timed recording, so the only problem would be that you would have to manually program it to record when you want it to, but is that so bad? Just plug the cable [or whatever you have] directly into the DVR or VCR via component [or composite, I can never remember what they're called: the white, yellow and red ones] and they will never have anyway of knowing if you’re recording it.
March 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Or, if you have an old (win) computer around, go buy a 500gb hd and a tuner card on ebay (<$150), install GBPVR (free) – like MythTV, but for those not able to get into the Linux model.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I wonder if it is a problem with just the Comcast TiVo. I have no copy restriction at all on my recording of John Adams.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3057/2339061669_bebfac4869_o.jpg
I also have the ability using the TiVo Desktop software to transfer the recording to my computer or iPod.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2350/2339876504_a5b8a08475_o.jpg
As you can see in the last picture, I have a mix of recordings that have copy protection on them. This is very odd indeed.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I probably should have linked to the actual photo pages on my Flickr account…
March 16th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I recorded the HD version via a TiVo HD device through Time Warner cablecards in Orange County, California, and see no such copy protection flag or any hints of date based limitations on my recording.
From previous discussions about this feature, I’ve always understood that this is up to the regional cable services to manage. TiVo merely honors the bit set higher up the stream.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
For those that can’t get into Linux (for whatever reason), you can also install something like MediaPortal for Win XP.
This is just ridiculous, BTW. If I pay for access to HBO, why should I be forced to watch a show on THEIR schedule. I mean, if I recorded it an analog format, there would be NOTHING they could do to prevent that, so why bother protecting the digital content? A boycott of HBO and Tom Hanks certainly wouldn’t be out out of line. (I mean, what have either done for us lately?)
I honestly think we should all just support those companies with online content. Let’s encourage them to make such services better, and leave the world of scheduled TV behind. (Not that I care either way, to be honest, since I rarely watch TV or online video, though I must admit a current addiction to Hulu and Joost).
March 17th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Aside from the outrageous monthly subscription fees, this is yet another reason I won’t be watching HBO.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:44 am
HBO Using Tivo’s Macrovision DRM To Restrict “John Adams” Miniseries?…
When Dean recorded HBO’s new Tom Hanks-produced miniseries “John Adams”—which is not a pay-per-view or on-demand program—he was surprised to see it was flagged by Tivo’s Macrovision software, which controls how many times you may watch…
March 18th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
[...] users this week reported that HBO is now using DRM that prohibits TiVO users from watching certain shows more than once.read [...]
March 19th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
[...] recent mini-series that debuted on HBO, John Adams, is restricted for TIVO users who recorded it to their DVR. The shows actually have a 24-hour expiration date on [...]
March 20th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I’m Stephen Mack, Director of Operations at TiVo. It has recently come to our attention that some of our subscribers using Comcast experienced issues recording shows on HBO and Showtime in the Richmond, Virginia area. We wanted to let you know that we are aware of the issue and have worked with Comcast to correct it. The channels were marked for copy protection in error. We believe that this issue has substantially been resolved and will make sure that we take appropriate action for anyone that brings these types of problems to our attention in the future. We appreciate our subscriber’s help in identifying such problems. We take such reports seriously and want to take appropriate actions to get them resolved as appropriate.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
[...] posted this comment here on the blog in response to the last update about the lockdown of the HBO John Adams miniseries, and I wanted to draw it to your attention (and [...]
March 26th, 2008 at 8:23 am
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April 14th, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] post on Molly Wood’s “Culture of Ownership” blog: “HBO is not a fan of fair use, and has already put limits on making any copies [...]
April 21st, 2008 at 5:45 am