Engadget and others are reporting that contrary to the very spirit of the set-top box DVR, TiVo says all subscribers with select devices will see ads prior to playing recorded shows after a software update rolls out. TiVo says subscribers will be able to skip the ads coming in the next 90 days, but did not elaborate on this as a user says they had to fast forward through the ads. Many subscribers are angry and threatening to cancel, calling the ads a feature that devalues the service as they pay for the ability to skip ads altogether.
This prompts the question: will cable companies, losing subscribers and looking to replace that revenue, do the same with their DVRs?
Original article: https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/21/tivo-pre-roll-dvr-ads-for-all-users/.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 23 2019, @03:43PM
On mobile, android, anyway, google tried to make ad blocking more of a PITA than just paying $10/month for the "Red" account or whatever that blocks the ads.
I kinda like the python script "youtube-dl" and feed a nice clean .avi or .mkv with no buffering to whatever is viewing it. Naturally google is not a huge fan of "youtube-dl" and the response to endless protocol changes by goog is endless "pip install --upgrade youtube-dl --user". Well endless in the sense of it seems every two months or so, google breaks youtube-dl and youtube-dl unbreaks google in about two days and then I upgrade...