What do consumer safety, personal privacy, and a virus-free environment have to do with TiVo? Quite a bit, according to Davis Freeberg over at Seeking Alpha.

On Tuesday, TiVo was issued a patent for their proprietary authentication system, which acts much like an encrypted password on steroids. Theoretically impossible to crack, the system offers TiVo's customers an unrivaled level of security for content stored on its disk.

With a secure interface like this, not only does it offer warm fuzzies for the security-minded consumer, it also opens TiVo up to an increase in potential ad revenues.

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