TiVo, DirecTV and DVR

1. Not good news at all for TiVo. DirecTV is preparing to offer a digital video recorder (DVR) service in mid-2005 that could duplicate virtually every feature now available from current partner TiVo, plus provide video on demand similar to what's offered on cable, say executives of the company preparing the software.
   
2. About the only TiVo function the new service will not have, they say, is the ability to jump over commercials. That's an unadvertised TiVo feature users can activate with programming instructions widely available on the Internet.
   
3. As media evolves into places the FCC never dreamed of when it created broadcast guidelines it might be time to start thinking about this stuff just a little bit more. We're still trying to deal with issues like this as if there were no cable TV, satellite radio or the Internet.
   
4. We have seen the forecast for DVRs and how the cable and satellite companies are poised to take 80% of the market over time. This will, of course, come at the expense of standalone and PC based devices.
   
5. Media Center Extender is the number one application for consumers with a home network and it seems it is to get content from their PCs to their TVs and stereos.
   - The same idea as in "Den lokala burken", "Paikallispurkki", The local mediabox
   
6. Setup is pretty simple and works well over my home wireless network. The key is using a sub-network that's fast enough to accommodate the bandwidth requirements. Don't try this over stock 80211.b.