PRNewswire…
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Just a reminder that, as I’m at CES this week, I’ll be posting TiVo/DVR news in tivolovers, Blu-ray Disc/HD-DVD news in bluraydisc, and any other random things in my own LJ – .

PRNewswire…
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Well, news continues to break. Dave Zatz got the scoop on the SlingCatcher. This is the rumored Slingbox client hardware. The basic use is as a receiver for your Slingbox. That makes it a perfect companion for TiVo – and might explain a bit why TiVo just started selling the Slingbox on TiVo.com. So you buy a Slingbox to go with your TiVo, which lets you access it from anywhere on the net – including portable devices running Windows Mobile and Symbian, and soon PalmOS. Then you can put a SlingCatcher in other rooms of your home, so you can use the TiVo from the other TVs. Unlike MRV, this is streaming so you have all the functionality of the TiVo immediately. And it is a one time purchase, not a subscription like TiVo.

But, more than that, Dave is reporting that Sling Media will also be releasing PC software that will act as a server for the SlingCatcher. This will allow you to play video on your PC on your TV. He also reports that it will offer numerous connectivity options – HDMI, component, USB, integrated WiFi – as well as an optional hard drive. I’m not sure what they have up their sleeve for the drive, but I could see broadband video downloads, and caching content.

It is targeted for a mid-year release for under $200.

I’d love to see a combo Slingbox Pro/SlingCatcher – something that is both a server and a client. It would be the server from your main A/V stack – connected to the TiVo, etc – but would also be able to receive from the PC, and use whatever other services they roll-out. That way you won’t need two Sling products in your main environment.

A quick note – Corel recently released an update for InterVideo DVD Copy 5, which has a number of updates, but the pertinent one is that it now supports TiVoToGo video, so you can use it to burn transfers from your Series2 to DVD. It also supports conversion for portable devices such as the iPod and Zune, as well as being certified for Windows Vista.

(The downside to Las Vegas – smoking. I’m allergic to tobacco.)

Something else PVRWire reported today.

pyTivo lets you stream most videos from your PC to your unhacked tivo. It uses the HMO server protocol. It will guess if your video is 4:3 or 16:9 and pad your video if it thinks it is needed (looked good on my tests). It will not transcode an mpeg that is supported by your tivo.

This is more for the technically adept. You need to install Python, and it is still in a very early state.

How’s this for a chain? PVRWire is reporting that Gizmodo is reporting that Team Xbox is reporting that Dean Takahashi of the Mercury News leaked some details that weren’t supposed to be announced before CES. The report is that an updated XBox 360 will be coming out with an integrated HDMI port and a 120GB hard drive. But, more to the point, it will support an IPTV service for video over broadband and DVR functionality. Microsoft developed the IPTV platform used by several providers around the world, so they have the resources to implement this in the 360. Unfortunately, all of this went down while I was on planes today and it looks like both the Mercury News and Team Xbox pulled their stories. Which lends some weight to the reports.

So, we’ll see how much of this pans out over the next few days of announcements. Bill Gates does the opening keynote Sunday night, he may announce details there.

It looks like the TiVo Series3 will be getting more competition in the CableCARD market. News surrounding CES is starting to pop, and one of the first is this article in CE Pro. Niveus Media is releasing an external digital cable receiver that works with Windows Vista. It takes two CableCARDs, like the S3, to tune two channels at once. Like the S3 it appears to be limited to uni-directional CableCARD 1.0. The article also has some good general info on CableCARD use with PCs. In order to support CC vendors need the blessings of both CableLabs and Microsoft. And CC OCUR devices, like this one, may only work with Vista PCs from the same vendor.

I picked this up from PVRWire

TiVo’s Director of TiVoCast Operations, E. Stephen Mack, posted an entry in his blog about the troubles with TiVoToGo on MacOS.

On a semi-related note, I’m in Las Vegas. I’ll be here all week for CES, and I’ll be posting whatever TiVo & DVR news I encounter.