I realize that HBO wants demand for their $80 boxed sets, but this strategy seems odd as any subscriber can order their free-per-view movies and shows for free anyway. The only reason I DVR their content is to watch what I want in HD, since the downloadable stuff is compressed.

I wonder how long it's going to be until the government is completely bought out by the entertainment industry and the only way we'll be able to record programs is if we set up a video camera and record the output of our televisions.

I was an HBO subscriber.....

HBO can blow me. Or you for that matter. This is most likely going to cause a chain-reaction with other cable channels. What a stupid joke. Now that the FCC is going to put into effect that channels on cable television cannot be bundled, I wonder how THIS decision of HBOs will be effected. IM not sure how the two could be related decision wise, but Im sure Im not making any sense at this point.

Oh my god! HBO has lost their freaking mind! Who do they think they are...HBO!

"To be clear, HBO's filing only affects on-demand programming." They took this out of context on digg too. I agree that any drm sucks, but to say this will keep you from recording the sporanos is a stretch.

I dropped HBO a while ago. The movies were repeats and the HBO only stuff wasn't worth the $/month. My only worry is if it catches on, it might be set for sports and other channels.

Well, this will only drive the market for people to buy (or build) machines that don't obey the broadcast flag. Or, we'll just have to download the shows off the internet :p Asshats.

Looks like the HBO execs have watched too many episodes of Queer As Folk; they've learned to do to us what the guys on that show do to each other...at least the Queer bunch kiss each other first. Do I get a kiss from HBO? Hell no! (I wonder what that would feel like?)

Why just the On Demand programming and not all of it, whats the difference?? We need to make salaried lawyers and their legal departments a thing of the past and with them the need to justify their expense by finding frivolous agendas to crusade.

The primary driver for this move is due to poor sales of dvd season box sets. No one really cares about HBO anymore because the major network television providers have significantly upped their game in the last few years. This post reminded me that I still subscribe for this crap. Bye bye HBO.

I'm glad I use SageTV for this stuff and not TiVo or Windows Media Center. Not my problem.

HBO, say bye bye to what is left of your subcription base. I have been a subscriber for year but there almost total lack of anything watchable in the last year combined with this bone headed move will end my relationship with them.

OK Guys, just got an IM from a friend of mine inside HBO. He wanted me to post this response. Some of this has been stated already: "I happen to know first hand, and even if I didn't anyone paying close attention to what was actually written by HBO can see that the restriction they are trying to place exists only on their HBO On Demand service, anything on their regualr networks can still be TIVO'd or recorded. HBO's argument is that HBO On Demand already allows the flexibility of time shifting and therefore there should be no need to have to record it."

The minute they enable "copy never" for regular content is the minute just before I cancel. I hope it is for the On demand service only. KernelPanic

Two people have clarified the story. HBO is referring to On Demand content only, not HBO "broadcast" content. I hate DRM as much as anyone but if we're going to trash them, let's at least get the facts straight first. Also, I don't get buzaw0nk's point about lawyers. Laywers are like a hammer. If you use one to hammer someone's head, it's bad. If you use it to hammer a nail, it isn't. Either way, it isn't the hammer's fault. (no, I'm not a lawyer - just think the blame should be correctly directed at the company steering their lawyers to do evil directly and yes, I realize there are bad lawyers but there are also bad teachers, firemen, plumbers, bloggers, etc.)

Something that needs to be clarified here... from the 5C encoding rules: --- 4. copy never - for pay-per-view television. Content cannot be copied. For personal video recorders, "copy never" is subject to an exception -- this rule can be set to mean "copy never but watch for a limited period of time," with a maximum of 90 minutes of "pause" time from the time the program is downloaded. --- So it doesn't necessarily mean that PVRs will not be able to record HBO content... just that they won't be able to copy it to another device, and the recording will expire pretty quickly. Doesn't make things much better -- if I'm reading that right, you'll have to watch a program within an hour and a half of recording it, which is pretty stupid -- but stating that "copy never" necessarily means that you can't record anything *period* is a lot misleading.

Yeah. I'm with those that think HBO can hug it. Have thought that way for a while. I see possibly 2 shows on HBO worth caring about - the rest, movies and such are hopelessly overplayed or out of date - I can apply the $X a month to Netflix or somesuch and have a much better return. HBO: -1, ME: +$ and better content.

"if I'm reading that right, you'll have to watch a program within an hour and a half of recording it, which is pretty stupid" Maybe that's to allow for buffering while you're watching the show, so you can rewind and fast-forward? Just a guess.

I just cancelled my HBO. I'll watch Sopranos when it comes out on DVD, I'm used to waiting 4 years to watch an episode anyway. I hope everyone does the same, then they'll see who really butters their bread.

there were a lot of interesting emails re: this and the "No Record" flag. It's been stated that this is for on-demand programming only, but programming is programming. i know this is kind of like saying "i should be able copy my netflix DVDs" and, in a way, it is. But fair use is fair use. I'm glad we got such an amazing response to this issue, though, and it's something we should all watch out for.

We've been trying out HBO for the past few months. We're done. Their original programming are ok, but their movie line-up is quite lame. ..and this story doesn't help things.

I would like to be able to subscribe to HBO without having to get a whole package of other channels. Out of the Extended Basic (about 100 channels) I only watch about 9 channels and 4 or 5 of those are local and could be watched for free. To get HBO or any other premium channel, I have to pay a lot more--between $35-50 a month. It isn't worth THAT much, but it would be worth $10-15 a month. The only solution I can figure out is to just rent the HBO series and all movies from Netflix. The only downside is that I have to wait several months for new series to come out on DVD. Anyone have a better solution?