(As a somewhat random aside, do you happen to know anything about capturing and controlling an HD DirecTV receiver from a Linux box? I’m hoping to find another option than their co-branded Tivo.)

The other attempt was MP3.com which would keep one copy each of millions of songs, and then allow you to register your CD collection – giving you access to copies of the tracks you owned. It was shut down because it shared the same copy with all the users, and it wasn’t a copy of the CD they owned, but another copy.

You could not watch it on STB B at your friends house. Nor could you watch Show B that your friend recorded from STB B at his house, on STB A in your house.

So the functionality just exactly like a DVR in the STB. If you’re an IT geek, the central system is kind of like a SAN. The hard drive isn’t local, it is on the other end of an iSCSI connection. (OK, probably not iSCSI, but you get the point.)

They aren’t allowing the shows to go to other people or other places. It isn’t like this is a TiVo+Slingbox replacement, where you can watch that show anywhere from the net. (Though, of course, I can see that evolving from this. Once the shows are data, they can go anywhere data goes. But that’s not involved in the legal issues today.)

I, personally, I agree about the control issues. I’d want to see this technology proven and the market well established before I jumped on. An established market resists major changes very effectively, so it would be hard for them to remove capabilities once people grow to expect them. Look at some of the backlash against DRM and the like, because people see it as losing capabilities they’ve long held.

Conversely, offer people something in return and they may bite. Look at iTunes – I use it too to buy most of my music now, and I know I’m locked into Apple’s products. (At least until JHymn is working again.) When HoTMaiL first came out a lot of people couldn’t understand why anyone would want to use a web based email service and trust all their email to a site like that (of course, most of those people were already trusting their email to some ISP anyway). Now HoTMaiL, GMail, Yahoo mail, etc, are HUGE service providers and are widely used.

For people used to full featured DVRs with a lot of power, this seems like a step back. For people with a VCR and regular cable, this seems like a leap forward. And for the cable company this is a much more cost effective solution than STB DVRs which reportedly cost them $800-$1000 apiece, taking years to pay for themselves.

It is really no different than Yahoo mail, or HoTMaiL, or GMail, etc. Or any of the online photo sharing services, online backup services, online storage, etc, etc. The network is the computer, and the computer is the network.

I’m a Director of IT Operations myself. While things *can* go wrong – economies of scale actually mean they can make this MORE reliable than most people can afford at home. You can have a RAID-like setup of tuners and encoders. Storage can be on redundant SANs of RAID drives. Because the cost is spread over the customer base. Putting those high-availability features into a DVR for the home would make it far to expensive for nearly all users.

I’m with you – local control.

No thanks. I’ll stick with my dedicated linux box that I can hack as I please.

I prefer the flexibility and independence of owning my own TiVos. Now if they would just put the Series 3 out already.

Thanks, but no thanks. I work in IT. So much could go wrong it isn’t funny.
It’s basically Oracles version of the network computer, only with a DVR.

At least, that’s what I get from reading this…