The Motley Fool has an interesting article on Tivo’s technology trial with Royal Carribean cruiseline on a show airing on the Travel channel. Tivo users will be able to click through to watch 2 minute spots of travel destinations that may be of interest.

While not the prototypical consumer, I can see where I might be interested in clicking a “more info” button on television ads. As an example, an ad for an upcoming movie might get me to click a “more info” button to see the whole trailer, potentially showing me the local movie times at the end by correlating my zip code to movie theatre listings.

Via TVPredictions.com, Comcast has announced a new HDTV Video on Demand service for it’s subscribers. They will charge $6.99 ($2 more than standard VOD) to be able to watch certain titles at HDTV quality.

Until next generation DVDs come out, this may expand the growth for video on demand since there are no real alternatives out there.

Toshiba announced the RD-X5 DVD Recorder supporting a 600Gig of recording space. It can store 1,071 hours of quality television.

It make me feel a little inadequate in the size dept.

(Hat Tip: Engadget)

TivoBlog.com has the scoop on what David Courtney, CFO of Tivo told investors at a recent Morgan Stanley Conference. He was quoted as saying:

“[Execs at DirecTV] have not given any indication that they expect to change course”

Here’s the original news article.

Following up on an earlier post about the benefits and perils of hacking a Tivo, PVRBlog points out a new website guide to walk you through the process. This is the easiest, most descriptive guide I’ve seen. While it states that it is for DirecTivo’s, in principle, I believe it should work for all Series 2 Tivos (Your mileage may vary).

Reading through the forums, there may be a “new and improved” way of modifying your Tivo (or HDTivo). It doesn’t mean this guide won’t work, but it may mean that the guide will become out of date over time as Tivo releases new upgrades to the OS.

This weekend, I had a little time to try GB-PVR out for the first time and it is definitely a contender for people willing to build their own PVR using a computer. You can’t beat the price of free (although I recommend giving a donation to the author if you use it) and combined with the ability to support multiple capture cards and distribute throughout a house using Hauppauge MediaMVP, it’s a good low cost solution.

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Tom Keating has an interesting entry on Microsoft’s foray into P2P technology. It was only a matter of time before BitTorrent got Microsoft’s attention, and what I found most interesting how Microsoft is harnessing that technology with a service they run called threedegrees.com.

The first inkling I got that ThreeDegrees wasn’t designed for me was that the link for Info was called “411″. I may not be the hippest guy in our neighborhood, but they are definitely not targeting my demographic. It’s obviously for teen IM users, but I can’t tell if the website is cool to teens, or lame because it is trying to pretend to be cool.

The service is what looks like instant messaging on steroids. You sign up a few friends to create a group, and then when you are online, you can play MP3 music which is group controlled and streamed to each member. You can also send photos and “winks” (little animations) to each other.

I find it interesting enough to mention it because the same premise could be used to share video as a way to watch shows together “virtually”. I don’t believe that’s available with the Microsoft service, but it’s only a step further down the road.

In the vernacular of threedegrees.com, “click here for the lowdown.”

eHomeUpgrade has the scoop on the new Kenwood receiver that has media streaming features. According to Kenwood’s website, the MSRP is $800.

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DigitalMerging.la has some interesting thoughts on the Tivo 2 Million Subscriber Milestone, along with some dire predictions. He is not alone, and Phillip Swann’s article, “Tivo: Sell or Die” adds a second voice echoing his predictions. While I share many of their concerns, Tivo has been doing a good job of growing revenues without alienating its loyal subscriber base.

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Gizmodo points out yet another personal video player (PVP) that is available in Japan.

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