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 a program and how long you can store it before it’s automatically deleted. Now the question is, was this a mistake on the part of HBO or Dean’s cable provider Comcast? Or—considering HBO’s infamous anti-consumer stance on time-shifted programming—is it the beginning of a sneaky “back-door” approach to locking down all their content, something Tivo’s own people said would probably not happen when they added Macrovision to their recorders in 2004?
Update: Missdona has provided a couple of useful links in the comments below. If you experience similar issues with select programs being incorrectly DRMed, check out these threads for advice on how to resolve the situation.
Here’s what Dean experienced:
“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.
Randomly flagged programming has happened before with the Tivo—for example, a Fox Movie Channel broadcast in 2006 triggered Tivo’s recording restrictions, but seems to have been an error on the broadcaster’s part. Is the same thing happening with HBO? What’s suspicious about this is that Dean discovered both the making of featurette and the miniseries were blocked, so more than one program was flagged.
In this Wired interview from November 2004, Tivo’s general counsel assured the public that it was unlikely (ha!) that content providers would take advantage of the Macrovision technology to restrict recording of regular programming:
What if the higher-value content is just the beginning? This could be a Trojan horse.
That would be a violent blow to consumer flexibility. You could end up in a situation where different products by different manufacturers would have different rules. I don’t think we would go along with it.
With the cable companies in bed with the studios, TiVo could be the last line of defense for the DVR as we know it.
Sometimes I feel that way. We’re aware of the danger, and the slippery slope. The danger is that DRM can tilt the balance of copyright so that ultimately there’s no concept of fair use, because the content owners dictate what the rules are. But I think content owners are beginning to recognize that if you make things too restrictive, then consumers will find nonlegal ways to achieve what they want.
We don’t know where Dean lives. Has anyone else tried to record this miniseries, and if so, was it flagged with DRM protection for you? (Note: it appears that Dean recorded it in HD, so if anyone who can test this with an HD Tivo, that would be even sweeter.)
“UPDATED: HBO’s new miniseries IS locked down for TiVo recording” [The Culture of Ownership] (Thanks to Missdona!)
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“Has TiVo Forsaken Us?” [Wired]
(Photo: Culture of Ownership)
@boomer6447: When I was 11 I didn’t care. You see that sort of thing when you look in a mirror every day anyway. (Well, if I were a guy, I would, since I’m guessing it was probably a man who got tarred and feathered. I don’t get HBO).
I test-recorded John Adams in HD on an HD TiVo, on Astound Cable in California. It doesn’t have the flag or lock icon shown in the screen cap above. I had no problem rewinding and watching from the start after it ran for 10 minutes.
You guys wanna hear old school? I taped sundays premier of john adams on VHS tapes. *Sigh*….I need a TiVo.
@kwh: How do you get channel listings/updates? I thought it has to phone home for those?
Cablecard people. If you’re not using a cablecard, there’s no issues.
@MercuryPDX: It can be on your home network. If you have an old TiVo that’s un-subscribed, you can use it to set manual recordings, VCR style.
@bohemian:
Any tips or site links where one can go and do this?
@missdona: AH! I have both of mine networked, so mine technically has never had a phone line either. I didn’t think it would work without the listings.
@david_consumerist: There’s some How To’s at Lifehacker.
@MercuryPDX: Un-subbed Series 1s will work like a VCR. Un-subbed Series 2s will nag you to be subbed, and if they dial in, they’ll stop working until they’re subbed. I don’t know about Series 3s/HDs.
just another reason not to use tivo. BeyondTV is great.
How do homebrewed DVRs record HD content? The Hauppauge thing above is promised for Q1, but are people recording HD today with their Myth/Beyond/whatever boxes?
@rhpot1991: I never said you were trolling?? I said QFT (quoted for truth) and agreed with you, I too have a mythbox… after i posted I realized that i didnt actually quote your statement (thought I did *shrug*) but I never said you were trolling, no idea where you got that idea :-
ahhh i guess QFT could mean quit fucking trolling? never heard it for that, but still not what i meant
Sasem has an external USB HDTV product that does very well recording HD content from OTA and unencrypted QAM. That gets you probably 20-25 digital channels (both SD and HD)from Comcast. The rest are scrambled.
Until someone comes out with an oem cablecard device for computers, we will all be at the mercy of Tivo, Comcast, etc.
@sleze69: Thanks and that’s what I meant.. .the encrypted channels.
@leastcmplicated: Ya, I didn’t know what QFT meant and google told me you were calling me a troll. All is well, lets all enjoy our MythTV together.
no flagging here. comcast HD in MD + tivo series 3
Likewise, no flagging here: Verizon FiosTV / TiVo Series 3. I’ve watched the first two episodes twice each without a problem. I restarted the first one a few times.
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, Showtime and Starz 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.