TiVo

There are ghosts in my machines. I'm convinced of it. Two weeks ago, my trusty 32-inch CRT TV started to fail. The picture would go green, then black and white, and then the death roll. Grrr.  Off to Best Buy to start researching what I wanted.

TiVo subscribers, how many times has this happened to you? You're watching TV, miss a line of dialogue, grab the remote for a replay, only to realize you're not home, and you don't have TiVo at the hotel you're checked into. Life sucks.

If you can possibly remember back that far, back in September 2004, it looked like TiVo and Netflix would strike a deal to stream movies to set-top boxes. It was a terrifically brilliant idea. But nothing ever came of it.

Isn't patent law fascinating? TiVo has owned the patent for, well, TiVo'ing. Their ability to time-shift while recording a show was a patented process, and DISH's DVRs were violating that patent. The damages stretch back over two years. The first decision was appealed by DISH.

There are so many ways to interface between your home entertainment system and your home computer. The lines between the two are disappearing, but one product seemed to be stuck firmly on the entertainment side. The DVR seemed to only exist in the entertainment console, unless you could work things out with MythTV, Beyond TV, or Windows Media Center.

Until now.