Michael Antonoff

Considering that TiVo first announced its HDTV plans two years ago and now offers a high-def version of its hard-disk recorder (HDR) exclusively for DirecTV satellite subscribers, devotees of TiVo who subscribe to cable TV have been increasingly turning to high-def cable boxes with HDRs.

Surfing the Web on a TV has never had much appeal for anyone who's comfortable with a computer. Even mighty Microsoft did little to increase the set-top browser market after it purchased WebTV and renamed it MSN TV. Now the company, through hardware partner RCA (Thomson), is trying again with the introduction of the MSN TV 2 Internet and Media Player.

Conventional TV broadcasting, whether over the air or by cable or satellite, sends out multiple channels all at once, and it's up to the viewer to tune in a particular one at a set time to watch or record a show. Akimbo is promising the next step: speedy interactive delivery of video directly from the Internet to a hard drive connected to your TV.

Even before Apple's iPod changed the way we listen to music on the go, audio hard-disk recorders - also called music servers - were altering how we store and listen to music at home. When ReQuest Multimedia christened the category with its ARQ1 some five years ago, the promise of putting away all your CDs and having any song accessible by the push of a button seemed too good to be true.