TiVo to add banner ads to service when fast forwarding | PVRblog In the really bad news department, PVRblog is reporting today that TiVo will begin to place banner advertisements on your screen when you are fast forwarding.
As one of the whole points for people getting a TiVo is to remove obtrusive advertising from your life, it seems like a really bad move to force advertising on people at the exact moment that they are using your technology to avoid advertising.
This act points to the desperation of TiVo and their management team and although it might help them in the short run it will most certainly backfire in the long run.
The article was Slashdotted here.
Why is it so bad?
The ad can’t possibly take up the whole screen or you wouldn’t be able to tell when to stop fast-forwarding. You still get to skip commercials at the same speed as before. Your two minute commercial break will take 5 seconds. What’s wrong with Tivo putting an ad on the screen?
I think you’re seriously overreacting. If you like Tivo, you ought to want it to survive, and to survive they need revenue. Putting ads in there makes sense.
If you’re so adverse to advertising, why are you watching TV in the first place?
Tom,
If, Tivo is actually going to put ads on the screen then this is a bad move. I would actually like to see tivo take a step in the other direction by removing the need to fast forward commercials altogather. I have to think that there would be some way to ‘tag’ a commercial with tivo software. Once these commercials are tagged, then somehow tivo software might be able delete them altogather. Why did they not build in this technology already?
As far as the new banner ads go, I wonder if tivo could just charge an extra .30 cents per subscriber. You might even try calling them to tell them you would pay more to not see the new banner ads. Of course if, it is not that big of deal, then no worries.
This is just one direction you might take. Still, there really is no reason why commercial removing software should put banner ads up.
Jay Peterson
http://jpeterson.blogspot.com
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