Despite attempts by competitors and the cable companies in particular, the TiVo DVR devices are leaps and bounds better than the competition. Two reasons: the features their DVR provides and the user interface. The only negative against TiVo — it’s a big one though — is that the cable companies DVRs have no upfront cost (or a negligible one). The monthly cost is usually slightly higher than the TiVo monthly cost but it’s the initial sticker shock of the TiVo that gives the cable companies some success with the DVRs. This unfortunately has led many people to call any DVR a TiVo which discredits the brilliant device TiVo created. TiVo has also done their own part in reducing the need for a non-cable company-branded DVR as they have shown great incompetence in marketing and providing real, distinguishing features of their DVR.

A lot has changed in the past year or so. TiVo has made great moves toward providing some real features that people are interested in. Namely, the Rhapsody and Amazon Unbox integration is very interesting — I personally have little interest in either but I think many other customers would find those worthwhile. The TiVoCast (video podcasts downloaded to the TiVo) is also a nice bonus feature which I actually do use. Soon TiVo will be providing integration with YouTube which can only be a plus.

TiVo also finally got their act together to start marketing their DVR to the cable companies themselves — Comcast is supposedly going to start using the TiVos as a DVR unit soon. Distribution via the cable companies would instantly turn TiVo into a true success.

For me, the most important missing component is a truly seemless method of pushing my videos to be displayed via the TiVo interface. There is limited supported but it definitely requires too many hoops for it to be a realistically used feature. The lack of continued Mac support is disheartening as well.

All that being said, TiVo still faces a relevance issue. The cable companies DVRs will continue to improve slowly and TiVos rate of change, despite their recent moves, isn’t likely to maintain them. In addition, numerous other contenders are attempting to create media-center related devices, many of which will add competition when TiVo probably can’t stand much more.

Notably, rumors have been swirling every since the release of the AppleTV that Apple would develop a DVR. That would be devastating news for a company like TiVo — Apple has the same brilliant ideas when it comes to user interface that TiVo has done so well… and at this point in the game, it’s very likely the features would be quite extensive.

Since Apple announced the SDK for the iPhone last Tuesday, I’ve been thinking about software that might be useful for the iPhone.  As I mentioned before, I’m in dire need of a new phone and the iPhone is definitely something I’m considering.  Despite some limitations, the AppStore that Apple will use to distribute applications is a nice conduit for independent developers to get there software to the masses.

Additionally, an investment fund, iFund, was created to provide capital for development of iPhone applications — now that’s interesting… $100 million dollars interesting.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I’m not the only one that’s intrigued — the SDK has already been downloaded 100,000 times.

This week has offered hope. I’ve been watching the deployment schedule of FiOS and this month, they have a subdivision listed that is commonly grouped together with the one I live in. This week, crews have been digging up and down my street and this morning they were digging through my back yard. I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s Verizon laying FiOS. I have no idea how long it will take once they complete the digging but I hope it’s sooner than later.

I’ve been thinking about building/buying/acquiring a media center for several years now.  I’ve never been happy with any of the choices available.  I would like to be able to view and record HD content (from 2 sources at a time), view and rip DVDs, and manage it via a remote control interface.  It seems simple enough to me but nothing seems to really provide all of these options in a nice easy manner.  I have a Logitech Harmony Remote which seems like it should be programmable to manage any media center.  HD content can (supposedly) be retrieved via firewire from a cable box or OTA (other-the-air) using an HD tuner.  I have a HD HomeRun and an EyeTV Hybrid providing me w/ three HD tuners.

Some of the options I’m researched include MythTV, LinuxMCE, WindowsMCE, Tivo,  EyeTV, and various “media center” software packages like XBMC.  MythTV is the first one that interested me but the guides for determining a good hardware configuration are severely lacking.  WindowsMCE provides a decent enough interface but the hardware is extremely expensive and you’re limited by the limitations Microsoft sets forth (which are many).  I really like the idea behind LinuxMCE - it has the weath of features of MythTV and the interface niceties of WindowsMCE but it is still in early development and the hardware costs are as high as for WindowsMCE.

I picked up an EyeTV during MacWorld earlier this year when they were on sale.  I like being able to use my MacMini as my media center though it’s a little underpowered.  Unfortunately, the EyeTV software is really suited directly to recording from the tuner, not for providing a “media center” experience.  I’ve been following the recent development of the XBMC project as it’s been ported now to the Mac.  Again though, the hardware requirements are a little steep for my G4 MacMini.

If someone would just come up with a solution that supported the HD Tuners out of the box, provided a nice unified interface that wasn’t “sluggish”, allowed playback of media from any source, and didn’t require expensive hardware… I realize it’s probably only a matter of time but I’ve been waiting ~5 years already.