Can I Record Music Channels on My Tivo DVR?

I absolutely love my Tivo digital video recorder. It has forever freed me from having to watch television on someone else's schedule, now I can watch the shows I want, when I want, where I want. It might sound a little ridiculous, but Tivo changed my life. Before purchasing my own Tivo DVR, I did a lot of research on the internet. After all, a Tivo can cost upwards of $200 so I wanted to be absolutely sure I was making the right decision. While doing my research, I kept coming across message board postings about "broadcast flags." Broadcast flags are bits of electronic information inserted into television shows that tells DVRs like Tivo copyright information about the show. Sometimes this means that your Tivo won't allow you to record a movie you order on pay-per-view, for instance. Or it may cause a special event recording to be deleted after a certain time period. One of the things I read was that music channels, like Music Choice, were going to begin inserting broadcast flags into their programming so that your Tivo could not record blocks of music from your digital cable music channels.

At the time, I didn't think this was a big deal. After all, the music channels like Music Choice are constantly streaming music to television sets around America 24/7, so why would you need to record it? It was only after owning a Tivo for a while that I figured it out: if you could record blocks of music from the music channels, you would have a built-in "buffer" of music so you could skip songs you didn't like, which is something you can't do with live television. Even though I remembered reading specifically that music channels could not be recorded on Tivo, I decided to give it a try. I set up a recording from the on-screen guide on Tivo, and the DVR gave me a confirmation that my two hour block of music would be recorded. But I wondered whether or not it would actually work.

When it came time for the recording, my Tivo dutifully changed to the music channel I had selected and began recording. I let the two hour block of music record in its entirety, and then I found it on my Tivo's "Now Playing" list. When I selected the recording, sure enough it played back just as it had recorded live. There was no notification about any sort of broadcast flag, and I was able to pause, rewind, and fast forward all through the recording. So, despite information you may have read to the contrary, Tivo can indeed record music channels delivered over digital cable. For more information about the Tivo service, visit the website listed in the resources section of this article.