What are TV Studios/Networks thinking?

I love TiVo. We all do. I have three of the older models. I use DirecTV so I can’t use the newer ones. As a result, I missed something amazing that has been happening on these devices.

Last week I visited a friend who has a few Series 3 Tivos. They are all networked. On these newer devices, TiVo saves you the trouble of needing to set each different TiVo to record the same shows. If you are in the living room and want to watch something recorded on the bedroom unit, no problem! You can access your recorded shows from any networked TiVo in the house. Brilliant, right?

Wrong. More than half of the shows my friend had recorded in one room were not able to be played back in another. Why? “This show cannot be played due to copyright restrictions.”

That’s right. It appears as if certain studios are instructing TiVo not to let their shows be shared from one device to another. Now of all the places to exert control over user behavior, why this one? There is no risk of piracy here. A consumer, in his own home, time-shifted TV in his bedroom. This network feature only lets you move shows around from one device in the home to another in the same home (on the same subnet). How does this impact the Studios? It allows me to watch the show where I want it. What is gained by inconveniencing the consumer?

Last week, before getting on a plane, I spent 25 minutes on the iTunes store looking for some TV shows or movies to add to my iPod. I keep my list of must-see movies in my Netflix queue. Of course, due to DRM issues, I can’t watch my Netflix “watch now” movies (which I am paying $18 a month for) on my iPod. Apple’s store had two out of the 43 movies in my queue. Neither were available for rent. I could buy them for $14 each. No thanks. Much easier just to Torrent something quickly.

Once again, the big media companies fail to grasp that the consumer is in control here. If they don’t make it reasonably easy for me to spend my money (and sell me their media at a fair price), I just won’t. Or worse, it makes piracy more compelling. It’s just plain easier to steal a TV show or a movie today online and get it on your portable device. Well, to be fair, iTunes/iPod is very easy, but at $14 a movie, no thanks. Some are available for rent, but not enough. And with iTunes rental, once I start the movie, it blows up after 24 hours. So much for falling asleep in the middle of watching one. Granted, streaming video online is getting better, but I was going on a plane. Streaming was not an option for me.

And why stop me from doing something completely legal (time/place shifting of my recorded TV show) in my own house? There isn’t even a compelling business reason to do so! It’s just anti-consumer for the sake of it. Here we go again.