Re:Is there a privacy issue? (Score 1)

Are the Tivo watching habits really worth anything. Right now, as I sit here at work typing this message, my Tivo is on. It has no idea if the power to the TV is on or off though. It THINKS the digital cable box is on channel X, but I could have turned it or the TV off, or changed the digital box with a different remote. Does Tivo try to guess if I'm really watching the show on channel X right now by seeing how long it's been since I changed the channel/paused/used rewind/etc? I'm sure there are times when I spend several hours on a single channel and don't press any Tivo remote buttons.

If you're spending several hours on one channel actively watching and you don't press a single TiVo remote button, then your TiVo certainly isn't doing you much good. All of the advantages of having TiVo over just watching bare TV are in what you do with that remote. Unless there's some sort of marathon on, my TiVo rarely goes more than a few hours without changing the channel to record something; if I were actively watching the live TV during that time, I would at least have to use the remote to tell TiVo not to change the channel.

When recording viewing habits, all TiVo knows is what you do through its interface or its remote. Which represents all the TV viewing for 99.9% of the TiVo users out there who actually use it.