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Last week when I was flipping through the channel guide on my DirecTV/TiVo receiver I came across an unusual message, it read "Recording of this program is not allowed by copyright." This was for the letterbox version of the movie "Jarhead," other pay-per-view versions of the movie were recordable. This is outrageous as far as I'm concerned. The integrated DirecTV receiver/TiVo DVR cannot connect to a computer, in fact without serious hacking it's impossible to move content from the device to any other digital medium, now the studios have added another level of digital rights management to their top-level products on pay-per-view.
If this intrusion into my living room doesn't scare you, check out this story from Engadget. It appears as though Philips is "trying to patent a method for flagging digital TV content to not only prevent viewers from changing the channel during commercials in live broadcasts, but to actually lock out fast-forwarding capabilities during ads in recorded programs as well." I think that may be the most intrusive, ill-concieved, immoral, unethical and hopefully illegal bad idea I have ever heard, to put it mildly. — Brian Ward
Matt,
I was commenting that this new level of "security" is not needed in the case of the integrated TiVo/DirecTV receiver because the unit has already been handicapped. The functionality of connecting the unit to your computer has been removed, so it's basically DRM on top of DRM.
Also, in Europe, the U.S., Asia or on Mars, wherever they're planning on instituting the forced viewing of commercials it's a horrible idea.
Preventing the recording of On-Demand content is not new. Comcast has forbidden the practice on its service since it first offered DVRs a few years ago.
Also, the guys at Engadget explained that the Philips DRM tech is specifically designed for the European market. Of course if implemented abroad, it could eventually find its way across the Atlantic.