BBC rethinks TiVo deal after outcry over 'spam'

Viewer anger has prompted the BBC to consider ending its two-year-old marketing deal with TiVo, the digital video recorder company, after customers found that a BBC sitcom was recorded on the machine without their consent.

Owners of the machines complained of "TV spam", likening the programme to unwanted e-mail, after TiVo set the 50,000 machines used in Britain to record Dossa and Joe as part of its tie-up with the BBC.

Now the BBC has said: "We have learnt a very big lesson." Sources say the corporation is reviewing the future of the service. The threat is a serious worry for TiVo, which is still a start-up company, and lost £17.7m in the past three months of trading.

Andrew Cresci, TiVo's European vice-president, said that while the "trial" had been an error, the company still wanted to provide TV companies with a new distribution system for their programmes.

Viewers protested that the sitcom, written by Caroline Aherne, was a post-watershed programme but that the subterfuge used to record it meant that children could have viewed it without their parents realising.

Mr Cresci said the principle of downloading programme trailers and adverts is better established in America, where TiVo has most of its 422,000 subscribers.