TiVoToGo for Mac Announced

An anonymous reader writes "After much anticipation, some backpedaling, a bite of hope, and a delayed release date, TiVoToGo Mac Edition is here. While there have been some unofficial hacks, those solutions have not been ideal for everyone. With support for transferring shows and burning to DVD/iPod, TiVoToGo is bundled as a part of Roxio's Toast Titanium software that will be announced tomorrow at Macworld."

It's still TiVo - I won't go there

[TheWoozle]

Unless TiVo change their policies about gathering information on what I watch, forcing downloads of advertising and other content that I don't want, etc., I don't want a TiVo.

I think I'll wait and see what Jobs & Co. have cooked up in the new "iTV" device. Anybody heard anything from the Macworld keynote yet?

Re:Unfortunately... There's DRM

[pyite]

I agree. However, watermarks can be pretty useless. Most are vulnerable to collusion. Assume for the moment that iTunes downloads didn't have copy protection DRM, just watermarks. Now how about five of us get together and download the same file on iTunes. Then, we get together and "average our files." Often times this will destroy the watermark but leave the original media intact. There is definitely research to create collusion resistant fingerprinting (see Anti-Collusion Fingerprinting for Multimedia [rutgers.edu] by W. Trappe, M. Wu, Z. Wang, and K. J. R. Liu, for instance). In the end though, just like regular DRM, it's a losing battle and there are always ways around it.

Generations / DRM isn't about copying

[bill_mcgonigle]

Then, we get together and "average our files." Often times this will destroy the watermark but leave the original media intact.

Yes, but to do so you incur a generation loss.

I'm with you though, watermarks are a great alternative to DRM from a user's perspective and from the purported-need perspective. Then you realize that DRM isn't about controlling how many copies of a work you can make, but controlling where and when you can play your media and suddenly the watermark isn't effective DRM anymore.