Tivo goes anti-customer in a show of stupidity

I heard Tivo plans to download to subscribers receivers a program that if you fast forward through commercials a billboard advertisement will show up on your screen. I don't have all the particulars of how this works exactly but if you don't read or accept the advertisement your personal information could possibly be given out. I haven't seen this in print for I am not a Direct TV subscriber but a very reliable source, a radio talk show host, was talking about this on his show. Apparently he is a Tivo user and seemed to be highly upset over the whole deal. I haven't seen anything this stupid happen to a paying customer since AOL decided to start spamming their own subscribers.

Looks like bunk, sounds like bunk, smells like bunk....guess what!?!?

Sounds like whoever told you that is a little to paranoid, as that's highly illegal.

AOL however, I would expect that from.

I can't imagine anything short of legislation or lawsuits would prompt Tivo to do this. It can't be a suprise though. Tivo, Replay and others completely undermine the business model of advertising supported programming. Something had to give.

Time Warner's dvr originally had a commercial skip feature, but the powers that be weren't too happy.

Worst case scenario, doesn't sound that bad...fast forward until the show starts and be done with it...a few half second clicks is better than waiting through 3 minutes of junk.
The industry is mostly paid for by adverstising revenues, so this kind of thing is to be expected. We're getting a little greedy if we expect NBC to pay millions to make shows, and then choke off their revenues too.

But it's an opt-in option, with the consumer's permission only.

Here's a report on how it works from the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-e...,3236496.story