AOL is Planning a Fast-Forward Answer to TiVo Seems AOL is worried about TiVo's (and similar services) ability to skip commercials, etc., and is planning a response: Mystro TV.
From a user's perspective, that service sounds like crap. Yes, it has the advantage that it requires very little or no new equipment to buy and very little setup. But after that, it sounds a lot like what TV is today: the studios and networks control what I can watch and when I can watch it. With TiVo or ReplayTV or any other PVR, I can record any program on any channel and watch it when I want to. But if I understand this article correctly, the networks would control which programs I can and can't watch at my leisure and for how long. It sounds like Video-On-Demand for the programs that the networks and studios decide are programs that I want to watch. Great, I can watch the latest episode of Friends for a week or two after it's first shown on NBC. (Well, that's great for my wife.) But what about the EPL Review Show on Fox Sports World, produced by TWI? Or what about Dragnet, produced by USA Studios, shown on ABC, and rerun a week later on USA Network? Sorry, but it looks to me like they're missing the point altogether.
I think this not only sums up the project, but the direction of the company since the merger. To me,it seems like they are banking on people wanting VOD and combining that with a TiVO like system. But with COmcast ahead of the curve on VOD and the prevelance of reruns of shows like Friends and more and more series' ending up on DVD, they are missing the boat. Or grasping at straws, more likely.
Movies on Demand is pretty cool compared to waiting for a ppv movie to start, but the pause and rewind functions are pretty crappy compared to Tivo -- maybe they'll improve it, but as it is now I use Tivo to pause and rewind movies that I'm watching on Demand. What would really be cool is if they had MLS Shootout on Demand and we could access all the games of the week at any time.