Nearly three short years ago, the buzz word du jour in tech was “realtime”. Real time discovery. Real time search. Real time serendipity. The explosion of interest in social sharing tools like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed (remember this was early 2009) had people (myself included) saying that “Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be.” In practice, while this has occasionally been true, I’ve found a completely divergent innovation to play as big a role in the way I (and others) consume news content and entertainment - that of time shifting, which has remained valuable at a time when most real-time search engines have pivoted or vanished.

Best exemplified by TiVo and other DVRs, preceded by the creaky VCR, the act of consuming media at a time much after its initial airing is so commonplace that live viewings are so uncommon that friends often tiptoe around current storylines for top shows. In some social circles, only the most breaking drama series get the “day it actually aired” treatment - like Breaking Bad, Dexter or Homeland, while everything else goes to TiVo, to be consumed later. (Obviously, I saw the season finales for Dexter and Homeland last night)

News, with some exceptions, can be similarly stored away for later viewing, be it through RSS readers or on your social network of choice. One must not be glued to the real time stream to make sure you don’t miss anything. Instead, the RSS reader traps your own hand-picked links, ready for viewing when you get the opportunity, not necessarily tied to their time of posting.

On the big screen, movies may bank on a massive opening weekend, but with consumers having so many options for entertainment sources, it’s common to see people mention they’ll “wait for Netflix”, which could be months or years away, content to save a few dollars while also getting the comfort of watching in their own home. And if you do find yourself suddenly interested in a show your friends have been seeing which has been out a few seasons, don’t fret, as you can, in almost all cases, catch up - tapping into many options, be they Netflix, Hulu, Xfinity, iTunes or Android Market.

This fall, I made it a personal mission to watch all of Mad Men, after hearing people go on and on about its quality. I powered through it with many late-night Netflix marathons. After finally ordering Showtime, I caught up on this season’s Dexter on Xfinity, and then did the same for Homeland. If my wife misses her favorite shows, she can do the same, tapping into the various video repositories on the web, including the big three networks, typically slower to adapt to the innovation of the web.

I watch my evening talk shows 3 to 5 in a row, from Jon Stewart to Conan, fast forwarding through commercials and skipping uninteresting guests - efficiently getting the best and skipping the rest. It’s almost the same approach I take to my RSS reader or activity on the social networks, skimming, reading, clicking and leaving no prisoners. Even if I’m not constantly connected, and I do a good job of getting close, I don’t feel this sense of missing something.

Realtime reactions to breaking news events, kicked off by an initial discovery, and then rattling around search engines and social media, can’t be duplicated by time shifted content, but for most buckets of content, be they text, audio or video, the drive to be first and in the mix of the story as it is interpreted and curated, is not essential. Advents in information and content sharing over the last few years have instead made “on demand” a reality, getting me what I want when I want it, not when someone else decides for me.

      
There is no one perfect home entertainment gadget. No single gadget manages to record all your favorite shows on demand, has access to the deepest online library for new and older titles, syncs perfectly with services like Netflix and finds all the Web's video at once. Devices ranging from set top boxes like Apple TV, TiVo, Google TV, Roku, and Boxxee, and game centers including the Nintendo Wii, XBox 360 and Sony Playstation, and single-purpose devices like the Slingbox have been working hard to make our entertainment consumption world ideal, but each has its strengths and holes. In our home, we've tried to fill all the holes, and this requires multiple devices, each one finding a perfect niche that can't be replaced by an alternative.

We moved beyond the traditional VCR/DVD world in 2003 with the arrival of our first TiVo DVR -a series one. Since then, we added two newer boxes, the TiVo HD device and the TiVo XL, the bigger brother of the HD, with a terabyte of storage. While the Premiere line of TiVos emerged last year, it wasn't compelling enough an upgrade to make the move, but we're very happy with the pair we have.

In 2007, with Apple's release of the first generation Apple TV, we snapped up a 40 gigabyte model, which is in use today. Last year, I also picked up the newest model Apple TV, which is stream centric. Meanwhile, last month, after some delay, I added Google TV to the mix with a Logitech Revue. Having seen it panned by much of the tech press, and the multiple demos I'd received falling short, it took some hands-on testing at a local Best Buy to push me to bring it home.

So with all these boxes and companion remotes, how do I choose what to use? Like I mentioned last May with mobile phones, you have to look to the core of each device to find their specialty.

Each Product Has Its Own Core Focus

For the Apple TV, the product's strength is its tie to the iTunes store, specifically, the vast video library which contains more new releases for rent or purchase than alternatives. Google and TiVo have close links to the Amazon video store, but the experience has never matched that of iTunes. When we want to rent a movie for an evening, or purchase a video for my kids to watch (like Toy Story or Cars), it's on the Apple TV.

For TiVo, the product's strength has always been around its ability to time shift videos and record my favorites. A companion benefit is its show guide and search, to find future shows and set them to record. The TiVos upstairs and downstairs run our scheduled programming, and having tried crappy DVRs from Comcast, Dish and others, there's simply no parallel to what TiVo offers.

For Google TV, the device is Web centric, much like Android, of course, and most things Google touches. There's something fun about browsing the Twitter app on the full screen, browsing Web sites, and enjoying YouTube on a screen much larger than a laptop. Tired of my kids running into videos on YouTube with the iPad that weren't exactly my favorite, browsing YouTube myself with them in the room puts me back in control and reduces their digital ADD.

Another much-overlooked feature of Google TV is the ability to browse what's on, automatically sorted by genre. Like most of you with kids, being stuck with baskets of laundry is made much easier when watching something entertaining. Yesterday, owning this task, I checked what movies were on, found Knocked Up just started and amused myself through three baskets of whites and colored laundry. It's similarly very good for finding out what sports are playing anywhere on the TV dial.

Is Google TV Any Good? I Say Absolutely.

As the Google TV is the newest gadget for us, and I've covered Apple TV and TiVo many times before, it's worth saying how good the experience has been. Reading scads of reviews that slammed its utility, or the keyboard remote, I was very surprised how easy it was to setup and how immediate its benefits were. I was most concerned that putting the Logitech box between the TiVo and TV would somehow impact the TiVo's ability to schedule recordings. This turned out not to be a problem at all. The keyboard remote was as simple as any other laptop keyboard, and the Home key always puts me to home base, the center of applications, what's on TV, and is the conduit to browsing the Web.

Even more futuristic is the ability to use any Android device as the remote control with the Google TV app. There's some fun to using the Galaxy Tab as the remote control, with part of the app's screen space devoted to playing the role of trackpad. If you haven't done it, surfing the Web from the tablet to the big screen is pretty cool.

Obviously, each experience could improve some. The Apple TV doesn't know anything about live TV and doesn't have Safari running on it like Chrome does for Google. Google TV makes no attempt to record shows, even though it knows they're on. Meanwhile, the TiVo doesn't really know the real Web exists, despite tie-ins on Premiere with Web widgets and third parties like Netflix, Amazon and Blockbuster. But in our home, if we have an entertainment need to fill, we have a box to do the job.

PR around the Google TV has been pretty light since its initial launch, and one could guess that maybe we'll hear more about the product at Google I/O in May, the one year anniversary of its introduction. Maybe new hardware and TVs will be announced, or new content partnerships, after months of hearing that sites (like Hulu) want to keep Google out of their kitchen. TiVo is due for a big upgrade that maybe makes me update the older boxes. And Apple TV only really gets talked about when you hear rumors that Apple could go the true television route and release an HDTV line. They've certainly got the relationships with suppliers, and the best UI team on the planet. But if you know what you want out of TV, Google TV, Apple TV and TiVo all have a fit and each one brings value. So don't get caught up the tech news grumpiness you find elsewhere. Considering how inexpensive each device is, you just might get all three.

After noting Apple practically being a zero in terms of mentions in yesterday's keynote at Google I/O, today saw the gloves come off as Google came out swinging against its competitor - and it had to be noted, even from this longtime Mac customer - that many of the punches landed, again and again. Most damning? Google actually took TV seriously - instead of teasing customers with a streamlined device, like the Apple TV, which looked great, and functioned well, but was often dismissed as not being a central focus. The result, despite the occasional bumps in the morning's demo, is the latest and most credible offering yet that could unify the worlds of Web and television in one place - on the biggest screen in the house. (See the official Google TV site)

Back in 2007, I had high hopes for the Apple TV. I openly questioned those naysayers on the device, celebrated its small feature updates, such as adding YouTube support, and postulated how it could compete and defeat other businesses, such as Netflix. But it seemed Apple had other ideas for the device - pretty much ignoring it, even as the company saw tremendous focus in other places - first with the iPhone, and now with the iPad.

Yes, the Apple TV still works. Yes, it can still show photos and YouTube and my music and pull down films from iTunes. But it's a siloed dinosaur.

Google made its antiquity especially clear today, as instead of using Apple's divide and conquer mentality, with Apple TV being completely separate from your TV, the company promises to bring the Web to the TV, complete with a search box that finds content, no matter where the source. The reason this has a much better chance to succeed than Apple TV ever could? Commitment. Commitment from the company's leadership, from partners, and to the word they keep smacking us with - openness.


Rishi Chandra, product manager for Google TV, says the company's new offering is about "taking the best of what TV has to offer today and what the Web has to offer today and give a seamless experience", which should result in the ability to find playable content - no matter where it is and bring it to the big screen.

Built following a history of unsuccessful challengers, such as Web TV, Google's massive potential comes from several points - including the immediate leverage of the Android platform, including the application marketplace and command from any Android mobile device, the full-fledged Google Chrome browser, the obvious support of YouTube, and alliances with Adobe for Flash and teaming with leading industry partners like Sony, Logitech, Best Buy and Intel to make the entire ecosystem do its thing.

As an Apple user, and as a TiVo customer, I have grown used to those two companies playing a significant role in my TV entertainment experience. Those two companies are exceptional when it comes to getting user experience right and making things feel smooth. Google hasn't managed to replicate that feeling of seamless integration yet, but their ability to display bookmarks on TV, to download apps from a PC and have them hit the TV, and manage the TV from multiple devices at once all look like they are getting so many features into this thing that there is really no way somebody like Apple can compete, even if they were to buckle down and try for real this time.

Google and its partners promised that the first television sets, set top boxes and input devices will all start hitting shelves by Fall of this year - in time for the holiday shopping season. It will remain to be seen how customers take to a new platform with devices coming from different sources, but it looks like it is Google that is "Thinking Different" about the TV and trying to open it up as a platform for its many developers to leverage - all while Cupertino pretends its Apple TV doesn't exist. As an Apple TV owner, I am disappointed in the lack of attention paid to this product, and think often my loyalty may have been taken for granted. But Google is executing so well in so many areas, it is obvious we have an alternative, one that, if the UI is excellent, could change the game.

Best Buy CEO Bryan Dunn, speaking with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, referred to the new Google TV platform as "not just a new aisle but a new category". Rishi Chandra echoed his comments saying, "Our goal is to have the same impact on the TV experience as the smart phone did with the mobile experience."

The TV looks like it finally may get smart. I just want to know why Cupertino played dumb for so long.

After changing the way many people watch television, by pioneering time shifting, season passes and the ability to pause live TV, TiVo has become synonymous with scheduled television recording, even under intense competitive pressures from cable provider clones. In recent years, TiVo's standard-bearer hardware boxes have evolved to include ever-larger hard disks, integration with wireless networking, avoiding pokey phone line schedule updates, and more additions to the machines' playlist - adding on music, photos and on demand videos from partners. Today, the company introduced a new top of the line product family with its Premiere and Premiere XL boxes, aiming to make the DVR the central entertainment box for your living room - including not just cable TV, but movies, Web content and music as well. Alongside the announcement, the company also introduced a new take on their trademark remote - with an integrated keyboard, as well as new partnerships with Pandora and FrameChannel.

TiVo's aggressive marketing materials call the new Premiere and Premiere XL DVRs "the one box to rule them all". The reason for the new messaging? A focus on integrating all these entertainment sources into one package, with improved discovery. As important to TiVo as the new boxes' 320 gigabytes of space for Premiere or a full terabyte for the XL model is a revamped search functionality that lets viewers find content from many sources at once - be they on cable, the Web or from partners.


For the last few months, TiVo has been running a search beta for its customers, and it looks like they have been watching the activity, as the new search shows the highly graphical interface, previously only accessible through their beta trial, including poster-like images for related programs, and hooks to BlockBuster, Amazon and Netflix. Searching the new Premiere line becomes even faster when one has access to the new remote control, which, when turned sideways, slides out to reveal a QWERTY keyboard, greatly easing the ability to type onto the screen.


Beyond basic search, TiVo is talking up its directory of programming and artists - saying you can now view actors' entertainment resumes and show's cast lists, much like an on-demand IMDB. TiVo also promised you wouldn't need to be constantly changing screens from menu to menu, moving to a more simplified UI, with double and even triple columns, built for today's larger HD sets.

Also announced today was a tie-in with Pandora, the popular music streaming service, letting you listen to your personalized radio stations through your TV set. This news not only is available to the Premiere line, but also to existing Series 3 and HD line customers, which means our home could tap into our music on the HD and XL boxes we have. While announced today, Pandora doesn't go live for a few months.

Interestingly, also debuting today is a relationship with FrameChannel, which promises to "bring the best of the Web directly to the TV, offering users access to nearly 1,000 content widgets of personal and commercial content, ranging from Tweets, photos and status updates to news, weather, sports scores and stock quotes." The FrameChannel tie-in is highlighted as your own personalized channel, much like a browser start page or PointCast from the late 1990s, but on your TV.

The new Premiere line carries on the TiVo tradition of getting ever thinner and more sleek from generation to generation, despite increased hard drive capacities. Also new to Premiere is an on-screen disk space meter to show how many more shows you can record, and a built-in 30 second scan, which no doubt makes it even easier to skip commercials.

The new TiVo lineup is available in a month's time - debuting in early April. The standard Premiere model is $299 and the XL is $499.

If you own a TiVo, you can't fathom using a television without one. The ability to have your DVR record multiple channels at once so you never miss a program, pause live programming, skip commercials, and have it constantly searching for new shows to recommend or show you when your favorite actors or directors are starring in a program, is without equal. But as Web search queries and alert capabilities become ever stronger, I've been thinking of the potential for a future TiVo product to pinpoint programming down to levels much more granular than an individual episode.

Let's start with the required elements that are already in place.

1. We already know that TiVo can pop up an alert for you when you are watching a channel if something else you have told it to record is going to possibly preempt your programming.
   
2. We know that there are many many other TiVo users who are watching TV, so there is a high probability that somebody out there on the service is watching one of the stations at any given time, and if not, TiVo has the capability to tap into that channel's feed.
   
3. We know that automated close captioning and transcription tools are gaining incredible improvements over time, practically matching natural speech.
   
4. We know services like TV Eyes are constantly searching for content within TV shows.

On the Web, I have the ability to get alerted in near real-time if the brand I am watching (or my personal name) is mentioned online, be it in a blog comment (via BackType), in a blog post itself (via Blog Search), or on a social network like Twitter (via TweetBeep) or FriendFeed. Weather programs can alert me if there is an advisory in my area, or if a temperature reaches a certain level. Stock trading sites, like eTrade, can send me an alert if a watched stock reaches a pricepoint, and if lucky, I can even have it trade on my behalf if I have sufficient funds and an order in place. Each of these is an example of what I think could be the next generation of programming discovery and recording for TiVo or other DVR services - especially if users could utilize something like natural language to specify what they are looking for. Think about the possibilities that could be obtained with an intelligent next-gen recorder.

1. Post a visible alert when the channel I was previously watching live returns from commercial.
   
   This way, if a program I was watching cut to commercial, and I switched to another channel, I would know to return back to my original show.
   
   
2. Post a visible alert for specified occasions in a sporting event.
   
   I could program my TiVo to alert me when my favorite baseball team returns to bat, or if my favorite football team had recovered possession of the ball. Similarly, I could set an alert to highlight me when a specific batter came to the plate, or if the game's score differential had decreased to a specified amount. (Example Alerts: The 49ers are within 7 of the Bills, trailing 21-14 or Albert Pujols is batting.)
   
   
3. Post an alert when a specific stock is being mentioned on a business channel.
   
   If I hold Google or Apple stock in my portfolio, I could set an alert with TiVo that would pop up if Jim Cramer mentioned the companies on CNBC.
   
   
4. The TiVo could record subsegments of a show, not the entire program.
   
   What if I could tell the TiVo to record Conan O'Brien's monologue and skits, but to skip over the interviews? That's mostly what I do anyway, by hand. Similarly, can we record Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but never have to see the guests?
   
   
5. The TiVo could learn my "preferred" news network and watch for coverage of topics.
   
   If I told TiVo I preferred MSNBC, CNN or Fox News, and asked the unit to watch for mentions of individuals, like the Clintons, or topics, like the War in Afghanistan, TiVo would watch the live broadcasts for me, and pick up the relevant clips for recording.
   
   
6. TiVo could integrate with network news' or ESPN's Special Report interruptions.
   
   While the concept of "Breaking News" has been watered down a great deal with the advent and growth of 24 hour cable news, the networks still can get your attention through Special Reports that interrupt regular viewing. But if I am on a cable channel watching something else, or am watching a recorded show on TiVo, I would want an alert that NBC had broken away to cover a critical live event.

Over the years, TiVo has become much more than just a recording vault for my favorite shows. The service now lets you search by show's descriptions to say, record every show with the phrase "Silicon Valley" in it, or every movie starring Johnny Depp. But I want more. The Web has spoiled me in terms of delivering real-time alerts and getting my attention right away. In contrast, TiVo's old-school episode by episode, show by show, hour by hour chunkitude almost seems wheezy. Even if we can't get to all my requests right away, I can't help but wonder how soon it will be before we can start getting alerts and recordings that are in smaller selections than the rules we have today.

If you could tell your TiVo to crawl shows you watch, or even those you don't, how would you customize this magical TiVo of the future?

About two years ago, I had my first visit to TiVo's headquarters in Alviso, just outside of San Jose. That visit only lasted a few minutes, and gained me a new remote control, replacing an original that had passed on. But on Friday, I had the privilege to stay quite a bit longer, as a guest of Stephen Mack, Director of TiVoCast Operations, as he took me on a quick tour of the company's offices, and we caught lunch, talking about his decade at the DVR pioneer and providing insight into one of Silicon Valley's arguably most interesting companies, sporting an incredibly loyal fan base, which includes me as a member.

Mack joined TiVo from SGI in March of 1999, less than a month before the company's first digital video recorder units were scheduled to ship. As he told me, co-founder Mike Ramsay had made the promise that the units would ship by the end of the first quarter of 1999, pushing the company to practically work around the clock, including nights and weekends, to meet the aggressive goal, making their offering first to market, just ahead of then-rival ReplayTV. This episode of Silicon Valley folklore came despite the fact the company, as he put it, had no working software, no working hardware, and no way to sell the products only weeks before the impending launch. Just squeaking in under the wire, the first units shipped on March 31st of 1999, on a blue moon - which is commemorated on the last Friday of each March each year at TiVo, as "Blue Moon Day" - an official company holiday.


Stephen Mack In His Busy Cubicle at TiVo
In the ensuing decade, TiVo set the gold standard for digital video recorders in an extremely competitive market that saw the term DVR genericized by a stream of copycat providers, including the local cable companies, DISH Network, and an on-again off-again relationship with DirecTV, who helped provide the bulk of TiVo's initial subscriber base, even as the company gained more dollars per subscriber with its native sales. In the most recent year, the company turned a profit of more than $100 million, after years of red ink, that had some declaring a TiVo Deathwatch, not unlike the struggles of Apple Computer just ten years prior.

The linkage of TiVo and Apple is more than just in their role as pioneers, but the pair also feature some of the most loyal customers in technology. The pair is also known for two other facets which gain alternate praise and scorn - including its penchant for secrecy and an adherence to NIH syndrome, well known in the Valley as "Not Invented Here".


TiVo's New Facebook Application, "My TV"
In June of the last year, I openly railed on TiVo to work on creating a social network to try and take advantage of its strong brand and to connect users. (See: TiVo Is a Zero On the Social Web. It's Time They Fast Forward.) And while they still have yet to follow on to my suggestions word for word, they are making strong progress in terms of showing they are actively listening and participating in the social space. The company has launched a little-known Facebook application called "My TV", which invites you to share your favorite shows, see friends' favorites, rate shows and comment on recent episodes. So it's close.

And yes, like all other good marketing companies, they are on Twitter, here: http://twitter.com/tivo. Meanwhile, although Mack doesn't consider himself a TiVo spokesperson, he has responded to blog posts of mine in the past that mention TiVo, and he is active on FriendFeed. In fact, in light of changed television programming in the last few days following the celebrity deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, he posted official word from the networks there, in case you needed to make edits to your recording schedule.

Working to grow TiVo is a very interesting business. Steven walked me through the company's need to colocate in highly secure data centers in multiple geographic locations - which would ensure the service's survival, even if the state of California were to off and fall into the ocean. We also talked about the struggles that are common to most OEM businesses, where large partners see every proposed change as a potential for compromise. In particular, he recounted to me the challenge of having DirecTV's huge services team trained when TiVo started to enable broadband updates to their DVRs, in addition to standard phones - and getting the staff ready for practically any kind of modem or broadband issue.


Stephen Mack Checks Potential Issues While at TiVo
The issue of DirecTV came up a few times from others on the Web who knew we were to meet today. First, it is public knowledge that the new DirecTV TiVo boxes are scheduled for the first quarter of 2010. Secondly, the hope that DirecTV units would attain feature parity with the go to market offerings from TiVo just isn't going to happen. Units sold through TiVo will always be the first to support the latest updates, especially as partners will remain conservative.

I also talked with Stephen about the visible hacking community around TiVo's units. My first box, a hand me down, had come with a larger after-market hard drive, a common upgrade. Such modifications violate the company's user agreement of course, but the company knows such activities go on, and some smaller "garage" firms have even built up side businesses to upgrade units, which TiVo has no interest in shutting down. Most of the time, the hacks are harmless, although it was not uncommon in the DVR provider's early days to see customers load Phillips software on Sony boxes and vice versa, introducing issues.

What was shut down, however, at least for now, was the company's Rewards program, that gave TiVo ambassadors points for signing up friends and family, which could be exchanged for TiVo gear and other equipment. It turned out that rather than the program's generating a waterfall of referrals from excited fans, it turned into something of a side business for a handful of individuals, who would buy used units from garage sales, sell them to new buyers and gain activation codes, exchanging them for goods through TiVo. Mack said one such entrepreneur was making enough action that they earned themselves 500 iPods in a year (which they no doubt sold).

In the fast pace of Silicon Valley, a ten year tenure at any one company, especially one that has seen such peaks and valleys as TiVo is a rarity. But Mack says as many as a quarter of the initial 80 people at the company who were there when he joined remain, acting as historians among the company's nearly 500 employees.

The company's offices, tucked away off to the side of Highway 237, neighboring Foundry Networks, Brocade and others, feature the interior bright colors of a typical Valley startup. Its meeting rooms are all named after TV shows, and Mack offered up that he had the bright idea to name one of them, optimistically, "60 Minutes". Meanwhile, outside, even in today's heat, a vigorous basketball game was being played, featuring many of the company's system engineers, who battled in a fullcourt contest of Shirts and Skins. The scene was idyllic enough to want to take out the TiVo remote and hit pause, but I'm just as eager to hit Fast Forward and see what the next several years will bring for the technology pioneer.

On most days, I don't consider myself a real bandwidth hog. Most of my online activity consists of e-mail, Web browsing and the occasional YouTube video. I'll use FTP to upload and download files to my Web site or the server at the office, but nothing too intensive. Practically the most-intense things I'll do would be uploading videos to YouTube or sending photos to SmugMug or Flickr. I can practically guarantee that Comcast doesn't blink an eye at my activity. But on the rare occasion I hit a wall on bandwidth, and see slowdowns, it reminds me I don't have infinite throughput - just like I don't have infinite storage capacity. (See: Terabytes and Terabytes of Data At Home. Petabytes Next.)

Tonight, as we were winding down from Christmas and putting the twins to bed, my wife and I realized we finally had some time to relax. After a holiday rush and full days, we surprisingly haven't had too many hours to take in entertainment. So I checked in on the TiVo, and headed back to Amazon Unbox to give the service another chance. We found one movie and set it up for download.

Not done, I hit "Input" on the TV, and checked the Apple TV, finding two films to download. One started to download immediately, and the other was queued up.

Meanwhile, the TiVo light glowed red to record a program at 8. The blue light signalling a download from Amazon stayed lit. As no program was done, I checked and found a Law and Order episode on one TiVo which I could transfer from the bedroom unit to the living room unit. We're watching that now as the films download.

If that wasn't enough, I opened up my laptop and... shock and surprise... none of my Web sites are loading. But that won't stop Apple's Time Machine from doing its regular backup to my Time Capsule in the other room.

So, in tally, my bandwidth is being hogged by:

• 1 movie download from TiVo/Amazon
• 1 standard definition television show download via TiVo
• 1 high definition movie download on Apple TV
• 1 standard definition TV show transfer between TiVos
• Backup from my laptop to Apple's Time Capsule

Even if I have top of the line broadband access here at home, it's no surprise we saw failures on the Web and inaccessible e-mail, as I had flooded my available pipe. Even though I'm not a P2P or BitTorrent junkie, I can still find a ceiling.

So, is the fault mine for hitting the "order" button too many times on the TV? Should I buy once at a time, in order, to do a favor to the cable company, or should I push the limits and always expect more?

i.TV, the online TV and movie schedule application for the iPhone, which we covered during its launch and subsequent addition to the iTunes store, has added the ability for users to not just see what's on, but to add those items to their TiVo, anywhere they are. Combined with the company's recent addition of synching with Netflix, and another announcement today that you can buy movie tickets, i.TV has become an on the go digital hub connecting you with your entertainment, wherever it may be.

If you're unfamiliar, i.TV is essentially a live guide to your TV schedule, browsable on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Let the application know where you live, and your cable set up, and you can see the current schedule, or choose a future time and see what's coming. You can rate items, or even add a review of a show, directly from the phone, or see other reviews.


i.TV Hooks Up Your iPhone with Netflix and TiVo
Now, the service has added support for Netflix and TiVo in your settings. Link to your TiVo account, and you can add items to the TiVo DVRs you have registered with TiVo.com.


i.TV Links to Your TiVo Account and Registered DVRs
Upon registering, every single show you browse has a little TiVo icon. Click the icon, and you get the option to "Record" the show, and can even add padding before or after the show, if you want to be sure to catch the ending or account for any timing shenanigans with the network.


Adding a Show to TiVo Via i.TV, With Confirmation
Once you've registered a recording, an e-mail can be sent to your account and let you know it has been confirmed, just like remote scheduling of your TiVo through TiVo's online site. The addition of TiVo services, given my recent TiVo HD XL purchase, and continued fanboyism of the Alviso company, puts i.TV back in the lead over What's On TV?, who we also covered at the end of November.

The full press release from i.TV can be found here: i.TV Adds DVR Remote Record, Streaming Video and Movie Ticket Purchasing. You can find the i.TV application for free on the iTunes store here.

Depending how old you are, or how early in your life you started using a computer, you can no doubt remember using floppy disks that save data in the kilobytes, hard drives in the megabytes, and squeezing every last byte out of your RAM. With file sizes increasing, and people wanting to store more and more data, not just at the office, but at home, it's not uncommon for people to be amassing hundreds of gigabytes, or even terabytes of data in their homes, for photos, music, television and all their electronic data. With some recent purchases in our home, I'm fairly impressed how much data space we have at our availability - and can't help but wonder what these increasing capacities could mean for the future.

The MacBook Pro I am typing this post on has 200 GB of hard disk space. My wife's MacBook has 80 GB of space, and we have an older MacBook hiding somewhere with its own 30 GB hard drive - assuming it still works. So that gets us to 310 GB right there.

When I purchased my iPhone I also got the Apple Time Capsule, a 500 GB model, racking us up to 810 GB. And in the living room, we have a TiVo HD, with 160 GB hard disk capacity, bringing us to 970 Gigabytes in total.

As of this week, we also just upgraded our old Series 1 TiVo to the new TiVo HD XL, which by XL means a whopping terabyte of disk space, good enough for 150 hours of HD programming, and bringing our running total to 1.97 Terabytes (so far).

Add on to those 1.97 terabytes an older 60 Gigabyte iPod, a 10 Gigabyte iPod, a 16 Gigabyte iPhone, and about 4 iPod Shuffles with a Gigabyte of space each lying around, plus a few digital cameras, and you're easily above 2 terabytes, even when taking into account the fact you'll need 2,048 gigabytes to get there.

The available disk space will absolutely effect my behavior. I won't see any reason to stop taking photos of Matthew and Sarah as they grow older. I don't have any real reason to delete shows from the TiVo I would consider watching again. And I can rest assured knowing that even if I delete a file from my laptop, or that of my wife, that it is backed up on the Time Capsule for later retrieval.

But if I were to take things even further - why not save every voice mail that ever is left on our home phones? Why not make all my calls on Voice Over IP and save every single one for later retrieval? Why not set up video recording so we can watch the kids' every move and just double click to pull up the video in high definition? Why not make a digital copy of every web page, video, and picture I see on the Internet - ever? We're getting to the point that disk space and massive amounts of it are dirt cheap.

Working at a storage company (in the real world), I find myself talking in terabytes and petabytes all the time. Check my about page for more on that. We are living in a world where data and what you do with that data can differentiate your business, and your speed of access to that data, its manipulation and retrieval can set you apart from your rivals. But the terabyte and petabyte advancements have trickled home. I wonder if having massive amounts of storage space can make us better parents, friends and neighbors. It's possible.

It was once expected that the fight for video and Internet content in the living room would feature major players like Microsoft, Apple, TiVo, Netflix, Amazon, DirectTV and others vying for a share, each with their own proprietary formats and devices. But as time has progressed, we have seen vendors partner and collaborate with one another so nearly all content, with some major exceptions, is available on each device. YouTube is on both the AppleTV and TiVo, for instance. Amazon can be found on TiVo. And now, after much anticipation, TiVo users can now link in to their Netflix accounts and stream videos from their queue instantly.

With the latest Fall 2008 update, TiVo Series 3, HD and HD XLR DVR owners can use the "Video On Demand" menu option and see Netflix sitting alongside Amazon and YouTube. As NetFlix has tried to reinvent itself from the order by mail company with scads of bright red envelopes, and be instead known for having the widest array of online video available, they rightfully demanded a seat at the table on TiVo's menu, connecting some of the most loyal customers in the entertainment business in the process.


Netflix and TiVo Together at Last
For existing Netflix account owners, adding the service to TiVo is fairly straight forward. First, you either click "Watch Instantly" or "Netflix Account Information". Then, you are presented with an activation code which you need to enter on your computer by way of the Netflix Web site. When the activation code is entered, your DVR recognizes the code, and you get clearance to your account.


Yes! I am a Netflix Customer

Activating Via the Web...

Activation is Successful!
If you already have an instant queue set up from earlier use, it is automatically shown on your TiVo. Otherwise, just go to the Netflix.com site, and add a few items to your queue. The next time you look at the "Watch Instantly" menu item on your TiVo, the movies will be right there.


My Instant Queue Is Ready.
Just last week, I wrote about how I had used my TiVo to watch a pair of films from Amazon.com's UnBox service, and had run into video quality issues. But so far, I've had nothing but good things to say about the quality from Netflix, and wouldn't expect this to be any different. While the catalog of films available from the "Watch Instantly" menu isn't the biggest I've ever seen, even the most stingy of film aficionados should be able to find a movie on demand to their liking.

At this rate, it looks like I'll never see movies in the theater, get the new releases off Apple TV, and the old archival films off Netflix. But between the two boxes, I'm probably covered. It's a great time to be an entertainment technology junkie.

All day today, I was looking forward to two closely-related things: sitting down at home to watch an inexpensive movie with my wife, and then rolling out a post saying Apple had missed out on revenue from the Gray household, as a new expanded relationship with TiVo and Amazon Unbox had us renting two films from that service instead of iTunes. But after two hours of watching substandard video with jagged starts and stops and visual artifacts throughout the film, it just reinforced our decision to go with the brand that represents quality. Despite the fact we only paid $.99 each for two movies, I feel I didn't get my money's wroth.

Sometime over the Thanksgiving holiday, TiVo updated its service, moving a new feature front and center on members' sets - that of "Video on Demand and YouTube."

The offering, which had been less organized previously, highlights "Amazon Video On Demand", saying "Rent or buy over 30,000 TV and movie titles from Amazon Video On Demand, and have them delivered directly to your Now Playing List."

Top movie rentals, including "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", "Get Smart", and others were marked down to 99 cents on the weekend, down from their usual price of $3.99. We hastily grabbed both titles yesterday, and figured we'd gotten a great deal. But it's a good thing for Amazon we hadn't paid full price, because the result was a mess. In stark contrast to Apple's HD-quality videos from iTunes, which regularly cost $3.99 or $4.99, we were subjected to video that stumbled and jerked, and had square or rectangle flashes at all parts of the screen throughout the film.

At no point during the two hour Indiana Jones movie did things clear up, and considering the movie had already been panned by critics, and my peers, the bad experience did nothing to make me go against their opinion.

As a loyal TiVo user and a loyal Apple TV customer, I was hoping to have the best of both worlds. I was excited to see that Amazon could link up with TiVo and give us a price we couldn't refuse, but if Get Smart is anything like the experience we had with The Crystal Skull, we're not ever going to be trying the service again. Very disappointing.

Despite having pioneered the world of set top boxes and time shifting recordings, TiVo hasn't become the dominant business success its many hard-core fans (including me) had hoped it would. While its issues ranged from competing with monopolistic cable companies to rigid payment structures, to being a near zero when it comes to blogs and the social Web, they have eked out the occasional update that has us hoping more is to come. Among them is their new mobile Web site, which launched just last week. (See WebWare and Gizmodo) On the road myself this week, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, I can connect with our home TiVo boxes using my iPhone and make sure I don't miss any TV I may have forgotten to tell the units to record before leaving the house.

TiVo's mobile application may not be as ground-breaking as their DVR interface is (or once was), but the offering is simple and just works. If you head to m.tivo.com, you gain the equivalent of their Web site, from daily picks and most popular TV shows, to a search option that lets you search for TV show titles, actors, directors and other show-related items.



TiVo Mobile's Simple Interface
Most importantly, by choosing the "Settings" option, you can choose which DVR is linked to your mobile account, after you have logged in, and you can add shows to the scheduled list of recordings. Either select a show from the daily picks and most popular items, or from your own search results.


Searching for NFL Turns Up a 49er Game
Using the mobile TiVo site via my iPhone, I was able to search on the term "NFL" and find all shows that had the NFL in the title. A few clicks later, and I was able to find the San Francisco 49ers' game at the Buffalo Bills is to be played on Fox this upcoming Sunday at 10 a.m. I could then click to "Record This Episode", determine the recording's priority, quality and whether it would start or stop outside of its scheduled time. Upon completion, I even got an e-mail confirmation to my account to let me know the request had been successful.


Setting the Recording and Getting Confirmation
Some of the characteristics of the mobile site are rather basic, from the links on gray backgrounds to the pull-down menus, but assuming the site is intended for use on a wide variety of mobile phones, and not elite smartphones like the iPhone, that makes sense. Now, if I find myself learning of a new show or one I'd like to record on the go, I can do so just by grabbing the iPhone and heading to m.tivo.com to TiVo's mobile site. Maybe there's hope yet still to keep this tech pioneer alive.