# Stream no longer is useful because everything is copyright protected.



## esilbe1 (Nov 21, 2006)

I am really fed up with TiVo stream. I restarted my TiVo premier this morning only to find that zero of my recorded shows can be downloaded to my iPhone through Tivo Stream. It appears they are being prevented from transfer because of copyright. 

While I understand that content provider want to protect unlawful distribution of their material, I can't believe TiVo has not brokered a deal with media companies for device-to-device streaming using TiVo. 

What's the point of having Stream if I can only transfer broadcast shows. I pay for Cable TV for premium content. I pay for TiVo to store and distribute that content. Then why am I not able to have access to it? Instead, I have to pay to download it form iTunes, which makes it even worse because the content is costing my twice as much. 

I just don't get it. I wonder if it were a different company - like Netflix - what this scenario would look like. 

I'm such an unhappy customer, I'm thinking of getting rid of TiVo.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I'll buy it.

Tivo has no leverage over your provider to get them to erode their revenue to change the flags back. Talk to them, complain to FCC, hire an attorney. If Tivo could have moved that mountain they would have.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah it sucks, but due to CableCARD rules TiVo is required to respect the flag set by your cable provider. And because of the FCC rules laid out for them they are allowed to flag anything except the broadcast channels. Most providers only flag the premium channels, but some, especially Time Warner and Brighthouse, flag everything except the broadcast channels. There is nothing TiVo can do about it. And the only thing you can do about it is complain to your provider, but they will likely just ignore you or respond saying they are complying with the law.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Still a head-scratcher as to why you can't stream these shows to the phone out of home however. Downloads I get, streams I do not. Silicondust does it today with Cablecard, but apparently Tivo has really crappy lawyers or as usual they roll over at the first hint of pushback.


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

Since they they got into bed with the cable companies, they really don't care about offer real choices to the consumer. Be legal reasons or their change in their companies direction, they refuse to go to bat for us, the people who made Tivo successful. There all ALL kinds of "legitimate" excuses but the fact is that the retail Tivo product is going away quickly. 

We don't have android stream support, not because Tivo can't solve the technical issue of delivering it but rather because their agreements with their new bosses require them to support the cable providers first and the retail consumer when ever they get around to it. The cable companies typical operating manner is to not offer choices but to maximize their revenue. 

Right now the retail customers are just a pain that Tivo puts up with until all of our purchased equipment becomes too old and obsolete, your next Tivo will be rented from your cable company.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

slowbiscuit said:


> Still a head-scratcher as to why you can't stream these shows to the phone out of home however. Downloads I get, streams I do not. Silicondust does it today with Cablecard, but apparently Tivo has really crappy lawyers or as usual they roll over at the first hint of pushback.


Yeah that's a mystery. There is no law governing that one way or the other, so it's a total gray area. Maybe SD is just taking the chance TiVo isn't willing to take.


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## NJ_HB (Mar 21, 2007)

I have a retired Lifetime Humax TiVo, what if the shows I recorded on it were and transfered to my Premier, could I stream then?


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

NJ_HB said:


> I have a retired Lifetime Humax TiVo, what if the shows I recorded on it were and transfered to my Premier, could I stream then?


You should be able to, the copy flag only effects recordings made on cable card models (series 3, 4 & 5) if your cable provider sets it. The exception would be if you use pyTivo to push a recording up to a Tivo then the copy once flag is set which you can avoid by pulling instead of pushing.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Actually those old S2 units supported another copy protection scheme from MacroVision. It's rare to see a show flagged, but if it is you'll be unable to even transfer it to the Premiere.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Just get a slingbox.


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## jevans14 (Feb 14, 2003)

I am not disputing anything said here. I do however find that it is totally unacceptable to be unable to stream shows because they are copyright protected or even download them. This is a feature that Tivo advertises and last month when I got my Tivo Romeo it worked. Now it does not. And to add insult to injury even transferring any shows to PC via Tivotogo is not working. Tivo needs to put forth the effort to get the copyright stuff sorted out with the cable companies.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

jevans14 said:


> I am not disputing anything said here. I do however find that it is totally unacceptable to be unable to stream shows because they are copyright protected or even download them. This is a feature that Tivo advertises and last month when I got my Tivo Romeo it worked. Now it does not. And to add insult to injury even transferring any shows to PC via Tivotogo is not working. Tivo needs to put forth the effort to get the copyright stuff sorted out with the cable companies.


Tivo is NOT the problem, it's the Cable Companies that you need to be going after, THEY are the issue, not Tivo.

I have Verizon FiOS, nothing but HBO is protected, Tivo's technology works great for me.


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## moedaman (Aug 21, 2012)

Dan203 said:


> Yeah that's a mystery. There is no law governing that one way or the other, so it's a total gray area. Maybe SD is just taking the chance TiVo isn't willing to take.


Maybe because SD isn't making deals with cabelcos?


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

dianebrat said:


> Tivo is NOT the problem, it's the Cable Companies that you need to be going after, THEY are the issue, not Tivo.


They are equally the problem, in my view, as evidenced by others able and willing to stream CP'd stuff.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

slowbiscuit said:


> They are equally the problem, in my view, as evidenced by others able and willing to stream CP'd stuff.


So Silicon Dust can stream protected content outside the home? if so that's a new development in the HDHomerun Prime feature set.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Yep, and it's not new. You missed this, been discussed here before.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=16528


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dianebrat said:


> Tivo is NOT the problem, it's the Cable Companies that you need to be going after, THEY are the issue, not Tivo.
> 
> I have Verizon FiOS, nothing but HBO is protected, Tivo's technology works great for me.


Cinemax is also protected on FiOS. WHich does suck that both HBO and Cinemax are copy protected since that was that the case until fairly recently. But it could be alot worse as the OP found out.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

slowbiscuit said:


> Yep, and it's not new. You missed this, been discussed here before.
> 
> http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=16528


schweet!


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## Austin Bike (Feb 9, 2003)

jevans14 said:


> I am not disputing anything said here. I do however find that it is totally unacceptable to be unable to stream shows because they are copyright protected or even download them. This is a feature that Tivo advertises and last month when I got my Tivo Romeo it worked. Now it does not. And to add insult to injury even transferring any shows to PC via Tivotogo is not working. Tivo needs to put forth the effort to get the copyright stuff sorted out with the cable companies.


This is a cable company issue, not a TiVo issue. Let's say that you love the golf channel and your cable company includes it in you package. You TiVo it all the time. Tomorrow morning you wake to find that your cable company has dropped that channel. Now you can no longer TiVo that channel. Is that tivo's problem? This is about your cable company deciding what you can and cannot view and how you can view it.


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## randy1649 (Apr 18, 2011)

My situation is even stranger. 1/3 of the same recorded series tv shows can be downloaded, the other 2/3 cannot. Im wondering if this isn't an app issue? I think my iPad did an update to the tivo app within the last few days. So maybe this is an app issue that tivo isn't aware of or needs another update to fix? I seriously doubt its the cable card/cable company issue. Especially when some download and others of the same tv series will not.

The shows I download are things like the old andy griffith, bewitched, hogans heroes.
The shows are also available OTA using the tivo roamio antenna option instead of the cablecard. So this weekend I will hook up one of my 4 tivos to just the ota antenna and see if these same shows recorded over ota antenna will transfer/download. One way or another I will get it to download. 

PS...!!!
Now Im really konfused...
I have one tivo roamio plus with the built-in streamer, and also three basic roamio's, and I just discovered the SAME SHOWS that were recorded on the "plus" unit ALL transfer/download just fine. BUT... the issue with only "some" of the shows transferring/downloading happens ONLY when accessing the "basic" units which is done thru the built-in PLUS stream feature that access the other units. Basically like using a stand-alone stream unit. 
Yet... like I said, only 1/3 of those "basic" roamio unit recorded shows will transfer/download. 
All 4 tivo's currently have/use cable-cards.

So.... is this a "plus" unit issue? 
Or... a communication issue with the PLUS unit built-in streaming feature when accessing recordings on the basic units?
When I bought the PLUS, I was told the plus built-in stream could access shows on all the other units, which are basic units. 

So I have the very same series episodes recorded on the PLUS unit as well on one of the BASIC units.
The recordings from the PLUS all will download (except HBO and premium recordings, naturally), where as when pulling the same duplicated recordings off the basic units, only a third of those basic-unit duplicated recordings will transfer/download.
Sounds like a firmware issue to me with roamio PLUS units having the stream feature, or an app issue, or maybe both?


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## randy1649 (Apr 18, 2011)

Ok... Im not sure why but I see the problem.
When I went to my PLUS unit to watch recordings off one of the BASIC units, all the recordings listed on the PLUS looking at the BASIC units had red X's and a note that THIS SHOW CAN NOT BE TRANSFERRED DUE TO COPYRIHGT.
So when I PLAYED-streamed one of these shows that said CAN NOT BE TRANSFERRED, the red "X" went away and that show was available to transfer and or download to another unit AND to my iPad.

So this is definitely NOT a cable company copyright issue BUT some firmware issue on the tivo itself. These, most all these recordings are flagged as copyright and not downloadable-transferable. But after playing the show from one tivo to another the red "X" and copyright warning totally disappears and the show is no longer flagged as copyrighted.

I just played recording after recording for only a few seconds each, while sitting at the PLUS tivo unit and accessing recordings off one of the BASIC units where all the BASIC recordings were red flagged. And after playing the recording for only a few seconds, the red flag was removed or gone. Then all these recordings were now flag-free and available to download to another tivo AND OR a mobile device.

I'll play with this more later.
Possibly if I restart the tivo units, all the red flags will be reset and removed all at once.
Sounds like a firmware issue to me and absolutely not a cable card or cable company issue.
These recordings are being flagged IN ERROR by the tivo.

If you do not have a least 2 tivo units, I do not know how you will determine the shows flagged in error or not.
If you do have more than one tivo, and you have this copyright flagged issue when transferring to a mobile device, just go to one of your 2 tivos and look at the recordings on the OTHER tivo as if you were going to watch from another room.
And look to see if your recordings on that remotely viewed tivo are indeed all red flagged.
I bet they are....
Then like I did, just start playing-streaming tivo-to-tivo the recordings off the remote tivo one by one, for just a second or two, then list again the recordings off that remote tivo you are accessing and the red flags will now be GONE on those recordings you played-streamed for a few seconds.

For those with just one tivo and a stand-alone stream unit, try restarting your tivo.
And try also power cycling your tivo stream unit as well.

Most of these non-premium channel recordings should "NOT" be red flagged as copyrighted. 
And actually they are NOT actually copyrighted.
It looks to be a fluke with the firmware and or the stream feature.
Tivo should address this.
This is easy to debug if you have 2 or more networked tivo's. And then alert tivo support.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Weird. Maybe they got misflagged in the last software update


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## meyerweb (Aug 9, 2004)

Man, I'm glad I decided to do some searches before ordering. The lack of stream support for Android, and the copyright issues described in this thread, have me seriously reconsidering upgrading my old Tivo box.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

For me the copyright issue isn't really a problem. It just depends on your cable company. Mine only locks the premium channels, and even then they only lock the primary premium channels so if I use the east cost feed they're all unlocked, as are HBO2, SHO2, etc....


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## shrike4242 (Dec 1, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> For me the copyright issue isn't really a problem. It just depends on your cable company. Mine only locks the premium channels, and even then they only lock the primary premium channels so if I use the east cost feed they're all unlocked, as are HBO2, SHO2, etc....


I'll have to see if Charter has such a loophole on the "2" versions of the channels here are unlocked to copy/transfer.

From what I've seen over the past few years with Charter, they only seem to CC flag the premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, TMC, Starz, Encore, Epix, FLIX, plus a couple I think I'm missing), though anything else is open to be copied/transferred. Streaming hasn't be an issue on anything, from Tivo to Tivo or to iPad from Tivo.

I did have one random occurrence like randy1649 had on one of my Tivos, my S3, where broadcast channels were flagged with the CC flag as were everything else, though a reboot seemed to fix it because the Tivo wasn't reading the flags right.


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