Narrow minded uninformed opining by wired.com

The good folks at wired.com are becoming about as tech savvy as cnet. Maybe this is what happens when you get too big for your britches. The article “Build Your Own PVR, Then Trash It”
sounds as if it was written by somebody at the MPAA and Microsoft, and handed over to wired. Here is an example:

For those suspicious of free software, a host of commercial options are at your disposal.

You can buy a brand new PC, running Windows Media Center Edition, and pair it with an Xbox 360 in the living room.

As the article goes on you begin to realize the theme (I’m paraphrasing here)… “Building your own PVR is expensive and stupid. It’s expensive because ultimately it will cost you more than your TiVO and it’s stupid because Cable, Satellite, and even Over The Air broadcasts are coming with DRM technology which will make it impossible to record shows in the future.”

Nowhere in the article do the mention organizations like the EFF who are fighting for the consumer’s fair use rights, and have successfully helped to knock down several attempts by the MPAA and others at implementing the Broadcast Flag initiative.

Another quote to get your blood boiling:

For the home brewer, this means their solution won’t work if they upgrade to high-definition cable, because the cable box won’t send a readable signal to any tuner card that isn’t part of a locked-down environment, such as TiVo or Windows Media Center.

Want more? How about this gem:

You could always unplug your cable box and record free HDTV off the public airwaves, but perhaps not for long. The industry is trying to get Congress to make it illegal to build TV tuners that record broadcast HDTV without including DRM on the recording.

That means the only option for a future-proof PVR is to use something like TiVo, Windows Media Center or a cable company-provided
recorder, which may or may not think your mp3 player or your second television is secure enough to access your own media.

Well.. I guess that’s it… I’d better trash my MythTV system right now, because wired.com says so.