Verizon's FiOS
is literally at the top of its industry in customer satisfaction and it isn't just the fiber running to the outside of its customer's houses that makes it so great -- although no one is saying FiOS is perfect -- it is the total package including how FiOS doesn't mark any content as
Copy Once or marry
CableCARDs to 3rd party hardware. Well here is the first bad news for the 69,000 FiOS TV subscribers in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin
that are now Frontier subscribers. You see although the company promised regulators that customers would continue to receive the same great service, on June 10th TiVo Community members started to notice they couldn't watch recordings in another room or on the go. After some discussion, and many a call to customer service representatives, it became apparent that Frontier is purposely setting the CCI byte to Copy Once, which for all intents and purposes locks down the content to being played on one TiVo. Not much anyone can do since the FCC does allow the Copy Once CCI byte to be set on non-broadcast TV, but still, it sucks for those who are affected.
posted June 19th 2010 11:02AM
I've said this many time before and will keep saying it. Media Centers and Tivo type systems will become useless. The Cable/Sat provides along with the Content providers will continue to make life harder for users of such devices. They will continue to restrict access to somethings (VOD, PPV) and it will come to a point the only thing you'll be able to get is basic cable service on non cable company provided gear.
For me, If verizon just lowered the lease cost of the there dvr's, increased the storage capacity and allowed me to add my own external storage, I can live with that and will not have to deal with the hassle of the media center and tivo world.. just my two cents (but due to inflation, it's now only worth half a penny)
@kevon27 Thankfully, the FCC seems to be keen on preventing that from happening.
@UnnDunn - And every time one of these bastards makes it harder, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the rate of piracy increases. Honestly it's just asinine how these big companies think that content providers think they can control us like they used to. Granted piracy will never go away completely, but by actively working against their customers best interests only serves to hurt themselves in the long run. This is the exact reason why I cut the cord last year and haven't had one regret since. Not only do I save over $1200 per year, I only watch the content I absolutely want to, most of it free/cheap over the internet via Hulu/Netflix.
Fuck you cable/sat providers. Fuck you very much.
And they wonder why people turn to pirating.
@SH Yea many people have become fed up with companies trying to control everything and not many people are going to pay for that bull anymore
At least you can get fios...
Every digital and HD channel on Time-Warner has been 0x02 for years now. It's obviously an anti-competitive action.
Of course, Tivo itself is partially to blame for not addressing the streaming versus copying distinction which would restore their multi-room viewing features.
I am LIVID at this news!!! I was really not looking forward to the switch to Frontier, and now I learn this! Unacceptable! I will be cancelling TV service if they dont change this policy and switch to satellite...or maybe just a plain OTA antenna and bittorrent/hulu...