TiVo to go

In the PVR blog, Matt Haughey reports on the HDTV TiVo, due in spring, and also this:

TiVo to Go is what they're calling their new video extraction, which sounds like it will be some DRM protection scheme applied to recordings you can download to your PC from your TiVo. They'll also allow you to burn downloaded shows to DVD. It'll be interesting to see how the TiVo hacking community uses/modifies/cracks this technology. If they wanted to prevent all piracy, I'm surprised you can burn DVDs, as it seems the content is pretty much fair game for DVD rippers at that point, but perhaps they won't allow DVDs to play on anything but computer DVD drives that carry your encrypted TiVo key. ...

The comments are interesting as well, including Matt's observation:

As long as they can make the exported video work great cross platform and run in normal DVD players, it should be fine with the DRM, but if they put any limits on how many times you can view, burn, or share your DVDs with others, it'll be the kiss of death for selling the features to users. People want these features and they don't want the software limits to get in the way of them enjoying the shows they recorded.

Matt also reported yesterday on some new networked EyeTV products from ElGato for the Mac, and today on David Pogue's piece in the New York Times on the future of portable video players, in which Steve Jobs throws cold water on reports that Apple is working on such a device. (Then again, it could be misdirection.)

I'm with Matt on this: I think there's a big future on mobile video gizmos.