I argued this in 2015:

> "...why I believe you will not escape ads by paying for your content: people who can afford to pay for content are people with money, or people with buying power, in other words, the exact same people advertisers look to target. The more buying power you demonstrate, the more advertisers will target you. So the more you pay to keep ads away, the more advertisers will pay to put them back in..."

I've been a heavy user of Tivo from 1999 to a couple years ago when I dropped cable TV. I have never heard of SkipMode. Is it something they just added? because "longest-standing and most popular DVR features" doesn't sound like it was just added.

Here in France, some Internet+television providers have started implementing a new rule : you can't skip commercials on recorded shows.

It was entirely dictated by TV channels, in order to close the obvious "recording loophole" : instead of watching the show in their VOD app, you could record it, and obviously skip all commercials.

Now you can't anymore. There's even a small dialog when you try that tells you that "Due to a specific demand by <TV Channel>, skipping is a disabled feature."

I'm surprised there's an online component to that. I've never seen such a device in real life but I've always assumed that these have some sort of automatic commercial break recognition and that such features were first introduced way back in the 90s when requiring an internet connection was impractical to say the least.

My parents still have a couple, but I think most people's reaction to this is "TiVo still exists?" CableCARDs are going extinct and there are lots of other options to record OTA these days.

Reads like an onion article. I've gone to great lengths to avoid ads - but it's a war I am losing. Content is now interleaved with ads at the creative stage in subtle (and not so subtle) ways, this inexorable convolution occurs even on formerly alternative spaces. Let me pay, I want to pay, I'll pay a lot, just stay out of my fucking head.

Once again PLEASE DRINK A VERIFICATION CAN (note this is from 2013, and while its origin is as a shitpost, it's prophetic)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632877-halo-4/66477630

This is a really good example of how capitalism doesn't work so well in a digital economy. Normally there is are various arguments about how the subscription pays for the development / invitation. But here we have a feature that's been there for more than a decade, the only innovation is figuring how to monetize it.

can't believe tivo is still around.

[dead]