Americas

  • United States

Remote Progamming TiVo, a Must Have?

Opinion
Mar 07, 20061 min
Data Center

Roused by the clock radio switching on NPR this morning I mentally clawed my way into consciousness to hear a news item on TiVo and Verizon offering a new service that allows you to program your TiVo through your Verizon cell phone. Being groggy and half asleep at first I thought that I had dreamed this but, nope, that’s exactly what is being offered. Now I’m awake I am staggered at how much positive press this stupid idea has received …

The issue is that the service is simply silly and pointless. I don’t know about you but I rarely need to program my DVR while I’m out and about. Even if I did need such a service would I want to spend an extra $5 per month on it? Moreover, only Verizon subscribers can use the service. Why would TiVo put so much effort into such a small market? This is simply a pointless piece of PR fluff that has somehow been swallowed by the technically incompetent mainstream journalists and elevated into significance it doesn’t deserve.

mark_gibbs

Mark Gibbs is an author, journalist, and man of mystery. His writing for Network World is widely considered to be vastly underpaid. For more than 30 years, Gibbs has consulted, lectured, and authored numerous articles and books about networking, information technology, and the social and political issues surrounding them. His complete bio can be found at http://gibbs.com/mgbio

More from this author