Philip Swann doesn’t think it looks good for HDTV satellite operator, Voom.

Wired has a short interview with Tivo Attorney, Mathew Zinn in regards to the new protection scheme which will put restrictions on keeping recorded shows.

The best bit:

You’re not legally required to have copy protection. Why not tell Macrovision to stuff it?

That was an option. But if there was no Macrovision license, we would run into a lot of copyright problems with things like remote access and “TiVo to Go” functionality. To innovate and give people more flexibility with broadcast content, we decided it was acceptable to allow content owners to apply protections to higher-value content.

DVR vendors are in between a rock and a hard place. Given the choice, I’d likely do the same thing Tivo has done. Getting Tivo-To-Go and continued innovation is more important than the “what might happen”’s that may come along down the road.

CNet has an article on Tivo hacking with an underlying theme that it gives Tivo some good ideas on features for the future. I have a lot of respect for the people who write hacks for Tivo, but I disagree with the article’s contention.

Tivo hackers have done some brilliant work, but they’ve had to overcome many obstacles to get things to work properly. MFS_FTP is a great piece of software, but what makes it so great is that the author overcame so many roadblocks to make it functional. Transferring files has been around for many decades, so it’s not exactly a revolutionary new idea.

Things that would be trivial to do on other platforms become insurmountable mountains in Tivo hacking. Things like converting a file from Tivo’s proprietary format to regular old MPEG2 for instance, getting the software to react to the remote control, or even just drawing text on the screen can all take many hours of reverse engineering.

I don’t blame Tivo either. Their business relies on the fact that they need to play nice with MSOs, and one way to really piss them off is to make it easy for users to break their business model. Tivo’s investors want their money spent wisely, and costly litigation doesn’t exactly bring investors knocking at your door.

I have a lot of respect for the Tivo hacking community, and I apreciate the work that they do. They are definitely innovative and industrious. It’s also true that they have come up with some new features worthy of emulation. I’m impressed by anyone who climbs Mt. Everest, but these guys do it barefooted. It’s an accomplishment to get to the top with snow between your toes, but it’s not exactly the fastest way.

One site that is particularly helpful for Linux PVR users is the PVR Hardware Database, which is a community-driven WIKI that includes a comprehensive hardware/software configuration database. It’s very useful for people trying to decide which hardware to buy to build a MythTV or Freevo box. Much of the success to building a functional Linux DVR is finding someone else who has done it before and has posted it up on a web page, and PVR Hardware Database is a good place to start.

Since the last time I looked at the site, it has grown a lot as a resource, including some great links to install guides for both MythTV and Freevo. It’s a great resource and we’ll be adding it to my links section under MythTV.

As a follow-up to our review of ReplayRadio, here’s an excellent chart on all the products that are available for time-shifted radio. The I Love Radio site also seems like a good resource for tracking these kinds of products.

I found this post on Snapstream’s forum, listing the features that will be included in Beyond Media, a new product to directly compete with other media center products.

Here’s what will be included:

• Photos
• Browse your photo files
• Play a slideshow
• Rotate or zoom during a slideshow
• Pan zoomed photos during a slideshow
• Supported formats: JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF, TIFF
• Music
• Browse your music files
• Sort your music by album, artist, or genre
• Playlist creation and playback
• Current Playlist screen with visualizations
• Supported formats: AIFF, AU, MID, MIDI, MP3, WAV, WMA, WPL
• Play an audio CD
• Video
• Browse your video files
• Fast forward, rewind, 30s skip, 7s back
• Playback support for Beyond TV SmartChapters
• Supported formats: WMV, AVI, MPG, MPEG, ASF, M2P, M2V
• DVD playback
• DVD codec included (with Dolby 5.1 surround sound)
• Fast forward, rewind, 30s skip, 7s back
• Previous and next chapter support
• Title and root menu support
• Audio track selection support
• Subtitle selection support
• Weather
• The weather plugin allows you to check out the latest weather conditions in your area
• SnapStream Spotlight
• Buy and listen to music from online music download sites like Napster
• Rent the latest Hollywood movies from Movielink or Cinemanow without leaving the comfort of your living room.
• Listen to Internet Radio through internet radio sites like Live365
• Plays well with Beyond TV, Firefly
• Integrates seamlessly with SnapStream’s Beyond TV
• Works out of the box with SnapStream’s Firefly
• Miscellaneous
• File browser
• Start Menu browser
• “Running applications” browser
• Full-screen setup wizard
• Automatic notification when new updates are available
• Customizability
• Rich skinning architecture
• Powerful plug-in architecture (based around .Net)
• Configurable menus

Sounds pretty cool. I can’t wait to try it out.

Like Tivo, ReplayRadio is one of those products that will immediately make you wonder how you ever survived without it. I’m one of many people out there who has a long commute and my radio is my sole companion. What DVR has done for my television viewing, ReplayRadio now has done for my radio listening.

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According to Digital Spy, Hauppauge just released patches for their line of DVB tuners which overcomes some bugs introduced by Windows XP, Service Pack 2.

DishNetworks slashed their price for their DVR-921 HDTV DVR from $999 to $549 according to Home Theater Blog. Personally, I think all the HD DVRs out there are over-priced at $1000, squeezing early adopters until all the change falls out of their pants pockets.

Hopefully, this is the start of a trend.

UnmitigatedRisk.com just released a useful new MCE plug-in to access Netflix from the comfort of your living room. While it has nothing to do with the Video on Demand or the Netflix/Tivo partnership, the living room is a common place where my wife and I have deep discussions on where an upcoming DVD should be placed in our rental queue (although late-night surreptitious adjustments have been known to happen).

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