TiVo has jumped another shark, adding a "feature" to its PVRs that few TiVo customers would have agreed to if they'd been given the choice. When you fast-forward with your TiVo, it will show you banner ads. That's right — it shows you ads while you're skipping ads. As Matt Haughey puts it, they've "sold your fast-forward button to advertisers." Time to build a MythTV, before they are criminalized.
People get TiVos for different reasons, mostly it's for the time shifting nature, but the close second most loved feature has to be the ability to fast forward through ads. The advertising TiVo has added so far has been minimal impact. The commercial showcases that show up on your main menu aren't that bad and often have good ad shorts and information, but pushing that into the main TV watching interface seems like a spectacularly bad move. No longer are the ads an optional thing you can dig for more, they're soon going to be pushed in front of you when you use a key feature of the product.
