Via TVPredictions.com, there is a good article in the International Hearld Tribune that discusses the upcoming broadcast flag. It’s a good overview and discusses some of the arguments of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington. Their argument in this debate:

“This is about whether the FCC is going to become the Federal Computer Commission and the Federal Copyright Commission,” said Gigi Sohn, the co-founder and president of Public Knowledge. “The FCC does not have the power to tell technology manufacturers how to build their machines”

According to the article:

Staunch opponents of the broadcast flag rule see it as an unprecedented regulatory sledgehammer.

In only a few limited circumstances has the commission issued design regulations for the manufacture of consumer electronics - and in those cases, only after a statutory mandate from Congress.

Copyright law has always been about the balance of protecting copyright holders versus innovation and the greater good. I’m all for keeping an incentive for artists to make creative works, but I question whether putting in the broadcast flag, which undoubtedly stifles innovation of valid and legal copyright uses such as DVRs and VCRS, is helping keep the balance intact. At a minimum, you’d at least like to see our elective representatives weigh in on this one.

Is Apple working on a DVR solution for the Mac, including an iTunes style download service? MacHTPC.com has some interesting rumors that something might be in the works.

This seems like such a natural progression for Apple after getting into the iPod and music business. The missing piece of the business is inexpensive hardware that can sell well at retail in the consumer electronics solution; just something that the MacMini can now do.

BTW, machtpc.com is a great new site in general, and I’ll be adding it ot my links section as soon as the site goes through it’s next update.

Rampy from Build Your Own PVR.com has some good news for MythTV users. It looks like a driver for the Hauppauge PVR150 and PVR500 is coming along nicely.

Via the erudite Thomas Hawk, there’s a new resource for Microsoft Media Center Edition users called the MCE 2005 Wiki. It’s a great resource for finding all things MCE and I’ll be adding it to my blogroll during the next site upgrade..

With three different Weather plugins to choose from, it looks pretty comprehensive.

Build Your Own PVR has some interesting things to say about the restrictions starting to appear on DVRs. Both on Tivo and MSO provided DVRs, restrictions on recording video on demand and undoubtedly other content are starting to appear, limiting the time you can leave those recording on your DVR. With more and more restrictions being placed on consumers of retail DVRs, the better it is to just build your own DVR using off the shelf components and software.

The roadblocks to building a DVR system are steadily being removed. DVR software is getting easier and easier to install and use, while at the same time, getting more competitive with products like Tivo. Hardware components like video capture cards are dropping in price, with $70 cards like the Hauppauge 150MCE and AverMedia 1500MCE, as well as bargain basement computer CPUs, motherboards, and hard drives, easily capable of providing the necessary horsepower.

The one remaining roadblock, shared by Tivo unfortunately, is the lack of a standalone solution to HDTV. It’s easy for a HDTV set-top box to record a compressed signal directly to a hard drive, but it’s very difficult to take an uncompressed HDTV signal and compress it and store it to a hard drive. That’s why you only see either over the air HDTV capture cards or HDTV DVRs provided directly from cable and satellite operators. Encoding HTDV signals in real-time is still a tough nut to crack. At this point, that will be the Achille’s heal for homebuilt systems moving forward, particularly as the dubious “broadcast flag” requirement takes effect for hardware manufacturers.

At this point, I’d rather have a good DVR system than HDTV, but that equation will change over time as more and more content is available in HDTV and a clear standard for next generation DVD technology comes out. Hopefully before that tipping point, we’ll see some new affordable HDTV encoders make their debut.

As expected, Snapstream released their new Beyond Media product. I downloaded it last night and my initial impression was fairly positive. As with their other products, it was super easy to install with a nice wizard interface to walk you through each step. It worked seamlessly with my Firefly remote and with my BeyondTV test system.

I’ll have more comments on it in the near future.

It looks like I’ll have to change my review of BeyondTV to be a 3 part series since according to Build Your Own PVR, Beyond Media will be released any day now. The software is finalized and they are in production and should be available some time next week.

This is exciting news, indeed.

Build Your Own PVR just hit a major milestone, registering their 1,000th BYOPVR member. As I’ve mentioned in the past, BYOPVR is not only a great news and information site, but also a helpful resource for people trying to get their questions answered about DVR technology.

They’ve also been very kind in linking to TVHarmony.com and helping us build more regular readers here. Behind the scenes, they’ve given us a lot technical support and advice, and they definitely deserve all the success and recognition that they’ve received.

Congratulations!

SageTV officially announced their release of SageTV Version 2.1. According to the press release, it has:

The software has also been enhanced to allow users greater flexibility
when searching and recording television programs. Users can browse upcoming
programs by category and record shows based on keywords (i.e. ice skating,
French cooking, etc.) in addition to specifying a specific title, actor or
program category. In addition, the software has been enhanced with improved
file management; plug-in support for on-screen display, inputs and
MediaPlayer; and revamped capture and playback systems.

I find the most compelling unique feature of Tivo is the program guide searching capability, and it will be interesting to see how it compares.

Additional Info
SageTV Website
TVHarmony Product Tracker: SageTV

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.