As someone who lives in the United States, it’s easy to forget that TiVo isn’t available everywhere. Over the last few years, we’ve seen TiVo support expanded to Canada, Mexico, China and pretty soon Australia, but TiVo’s international expansion hasn’t come without its fair share of head fakes.
Early on in their history, TiVo tried to bring the TiVolution to Britain, but the initiative proved too costly and they later withdrew support to focus on North America. For a long time, I thought that TiVo would stick exclusively to the US market, but about three years ago, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun announced that TiVo was trying to form a Japanese partnership and had plans to launch a version of TiVo in Japan, beginning in early 2007.
2007 came and went and while TiVo has achieved significant progress on their international expansion, they never mentioned the TiVo Japan partnership again. After failing to launch the service in 07′, I had given up all hope of seeing TiVo in Japan, but after a long slumber, it appears that the sun the moon has once again risen on the TiVo Japan website.
Instead of announcing new plans for a Japanese service though, the website has apparently been hacked by a group who is upset about an upcoming advertising program by TiVo. If you go to the TiVo.jp website, they’ve posted a warning about plans by TiVo to disable fast forwarding capabilities on their sponsors’ commercials. In a statement condemning the program, the hackers have vowed to retain control over the site until TiVo agrees to a forthcoming list of their demands.
“We at the Japanese branch of the Television Internet Video Organization (TIVO.jp) believe that fast forwarding through bad content is a fundamental right that every human being should have access to. It shouldn’t matter whether you live in Alviso, California or Yamanashi Japan, we dream of a world where ad skipping is available to everyone.
With TiVo silently plotting to take away our fast forwarding capabilities, we felt that we had no choice, but to strike back by taking control over the TiVo Japan website. Our hope is that TiVo will reconsider their anti-ad skipping stance and will agree to reinstate our ability to blow past bad commercials.”
While I applaud TiVo for trying to come up with an innovative way to reward their shareholders, I can’t help but wonder how popular fast forward blocking will be with TiVo’s customers. It’s likely that this may be an April Fool’s joke by TiVo and that they may be having some fun with their own website, but somehow I doubt that they would Goatse their customers with a faux protest. The site has an RSS feed and I’ll be tuning in for more announcements. I don’t think that we’re any closer to seeing TiVo DVRs in Japan, but at least the website has new content.
#1 by Thomas Hawk on April 1, 2008 - 8:14 am
The moment that TiVo disables the first ad skipping partner in the U.S. will be the moment that I stop using TiVo all together.
#2 by Dale Dietrich on April 2, 2008 - 6:43 am
Agreed, without fast forward through, I would never have purchased my Tivos. But conversely, I use my TiVo to rewatch the commercials I’m interested in or make me laugh. I love the Geiko commercials.