More Time Warner DVR Fakery

Last year, Time Warner Cable brought us “Start Over” which allows one to start a television show from the beginning (while it’s still being broadcast) if, say, you’re running late. I guess Start Over is such a success (available in 23 states, 8 more by the end of the year) that TWC is expanding their … Read more

TiVo.Com Survey

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I was chatting with one of my blogging buddies who mentioned I should check out The 4400. We had caught the first season on DVD and enjoyed it, but I heard or read something that implied the later seasons weren’t as good – and we moved on. However, he said he’s enjoyed all of them… So we’re going to give it a shot and before we miss more episodes, I headed on over to tivo.com for some online scheduling action.

As you can see from the image above, I was hit with a survey. Before getting into the nitty gritty of it, they asked why I was visiting the site. Apparently I gave the wrong answer because the survey abruptly concluded. Bummer.

So what could tivo.com use? We had an interesting suggestion the other day for some badge creation tools that hook into our units and display our top Season Passes and such. I think we could even go a little simpler by displaying our model(s) — though, they should be customizable. Everyone wants to brag about the size of their hard drive, right?

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Mac Netflix Streaming Coming In ’08?

Netflix confirms what we knew to be the holdup in bringing “Watch Now” streaming movies to OS X: A key issue for delivering movies online is that the studios require use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) to protect titles. And that’s our holdup for the Mac – there’s not yet a studio-sanctioned, publicly-available Mac DRM … Read more

Mari Goes on Vacation

Vacation is always a good thing, but it’s made even better with every technology advance. Here are the top five ways tech will be improving my trip to the beach this week: Portable DVD player to keep child happy in the car GPS to the beach rental Wi-Fi at the beach (no kidding – it’s … Read more

HTPC: The Cost of Guide Data

As anyone running freeware HTPC DVR software already knows Zap2It will cease to provide free guide data as of 9/1. While I’m sure there’ll be (already are?) solutions that scrape or import programming info (from somewhere), Schedules Direct is attempting to fill the void with a pay service of $5/mo. Wonder how many PC users … Read more

Xbox 360 Update

Wondering about that Xbox 360 update last week? I was – Major Nelson says it provides support for the upcoming wireless guitars (and a more substantial Xbox update is coming later this year). Though I’ve got to say I’m pretty much over Guitar Hero… and ready for my Rock Band drum set!

Apple Releases My iTunes Badges and Feeds

Didn’t I say Apple would be getting social? Still nothing for Safari though… Hm. Anyhow, this is a small step in the right direction by providing personalized iTunes-related RSS feeds and graphical badges of various categories, color schemes, and sizes. Of course Apple isn’t being entirely altruistic here — they hope to mobilize customers in … Read more