Sean Alexander at Addicted to Digital Media reports on Tivo’s launch of the TivoToGo service which has been highly anticipated by many.
It seems that aside form being a windows only deal – come on Tivo! – there are some significant restrictions, like not being able to take flagged content like the Sopranos with you, not working with DirecTV units, not working with many DVD burners (software purchased separately… and it’s not even out yet) and having to constantly enter your password.
Restricting what content works with a strong-DRM system is an incredibly bad move in my mind. Why even bother? Other than possibly being easy to use – and that’s questionable with all the password authentication and lack of support initially for DVD Burners – you’d be better off losing a degree of quality and sticking to the analog to digital conversion path most people have been using to archive or transport content.
There’s a chance it will work on the Mac eventually, but I fear Tivo might be missing a serious opportunity to keep this simple. When you read about the service on their site, there’s quite a bit off techno-jargon including codecs which is certain to scare off a good many people. At least it seems to be a free addition to your existing service.