[mythtv-users] "Odometer" Threads

[jedi at mishnet.org]

> Steve Smith wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> "Recording one program while watching another"?!?!?!
>>
>> JVC you'd better watch out, that VHS video idea you stole off Tivo using
>> your time machine and then ported back 20
>> years is coming to bite you!
>>
>
> Well that's really an oversimplification of what the case is about,
> you'd have to read the patent app and the case to get a true picture.

   Not really. This is a classic case of taking something old, bolting
it onto a new technology, and then dressing it up as something new. The
interesting bit is "make a VCR out of a PC". Everything beyond that is
obvious. Most if not all of what's in that patent application would be
independently "invented" by any group of CIS undergrads told to invent
a PVR as part of a class assignment.

   The moment I heard of Tivo, I started seeking out consumer MPEG2
encoder cards cards as I realized that was the key element that would
allow my 1994/1998 era PC do what a Tivo does.

   Even the early brooktree cards came with "PVR software". Although
without some means to compress video your bttv era PC is going to
fill up quick.

>
> Like a lot of us I was very happy to see TiVo using Linux, but having
> seen them be so grudging about releasing source code, pushing OSS
> towards GPL3 and basically contributing nothing back to the community I
> have come to realize that not everything using Linux is a good thing.
>
> Now, with this specious (to me at least) case, I see that they are
> greedy capitalists like the rest of them.

   True. I don't want an expanded "Tivo only" gulag. I want freedom
from the multiple "Foo only" gulags that seem to be all the rage now.
Let Dish have their bundleware but also allow full use of other vendor
products as well.

[deletia]

    I really don't want to help them at this point (Tivo Corp).