Coming soon: set-top boxes with crippled DVD burners
Cable boxes with hard drives for recording TV shows like a TiVo have been around for a while now, and in about a year or so they're going to start coming with built-in DVD burners as well. That's great for anyone who wants to create an archive of their favorite shows, but the TV networks and cable companies are already paranoid enough about people pirating and sharing their shows online (as well they should be), and so they're pushing for the burners to have copy protections that would prevent you from watching DVDs recorded with your cable box on another DVD player or a PC. So essentially you'd be able to create an archive, but when your cable box dies on you or you move and switch to a different cable or satellite provider, your entire collection would be useless to you.
[Via Designtechnica]
