I picked up ten one-sheets about TiVo’s advertising offerings at CES 2007, and I just got them scanned and posted.

GameVideos.com has a couple of video interviews about the XBox 360. Mainly about their IPTV service, but it touches on things like a larger drive, DVR functionality, etc. Decent for keeping track of what’s happening in the market – Part 1 and Part 2. I picked this up from PVRWire

Well, the recent furor over porn companies not being able to release on Blu-ray seems to be over – “Debbie Does Dallas… Again” is being released on Blu-ray. It is a sequel to the original Debbie Does Dallas, and it will be in 1080p and include alternate angles for ‘key scenes’.

A consortium of movie studios and technology companies backing the encryption system for high-definition DVDs on Thursday confirmed that hackers have stolen “title keys” and used them to decrypt high-definition DVDs through flaws in DVD player software

This could be good for Blu-ray in the long run. The Blu-ray group added BD+ and ROM Mark to BD to add security above and beyond AACS. Most BD titles at this point do not use BD+, but this could push studios into using it since they can’t rely on AACS alone. Though I’m sure that the keys that have been grabbed will be revoked.

I wish I’d thought of this. Remember the TiVo Snow Globe and Toaster I posted about in December? Dave Zatz over at ZatzNotFunny worked with E. Stephen Mack, the Director of TiVoCast Operations, to reserve one of the toasters for raffle. For every $10 sent in via PayPal you get one virtual raffle ticket. At the end of January, one winner will be randomly selected and the toaster will be shipped to them. Dave will send all of the ticket fees, plus the AdSense income for ZNF for December, to CNet for the James Kim Memorial Fund. Details on getting your raffle ticket(s) are here.

TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and CBS today announced the launch of a special two-week Super Bowl campaign that will leverage TiVo’s Emmy-award winning interactive advertising features to promote SUPER BOWL XLI and its Super Monday line-up, including the new CBS comedy RULES OF ENGAGEMENT. The Gold Star Sponsorship will feature exclusive content for RULES OF ENGAGEMENT and CRIMINAL MINDS and TiVo will offer a One-Click Record from a Showcase, allowing TiVo subscribers to schedule a recording of not only SUPER BOWL XLI, but to also set up a Season Pass to record the entire Monday night CBS comedy line-up. This two-week campaign will air through Tuesday, February 6.

DIRECTV says recording problems with its TiVo HD DVR — and other TiVo DVRs — can be fixed with a simple reboot.

Check out the post over at TVPredictions.com. Basically, DirecTV is saying that they’ve fixed the problem with recordings on DirecTiVos, and anyone still seeing problems just needs to reboot. I’m not so sure, since people reported that a reboot would clear it up for a while, but it would return. Only time will tell of they’ve really fixed it.

This was announced on TiVoCommunity.com today. From the project Wiki page:

TiVo.Net is a windows service that acts as a TiVo GoBack server. It loads many standard video compression codecs and outputs mpeg2 video to the TiVo. It allows you to watch videos that are stored on your computer in, say, DivX format without having to wait for the video to be transcoded first. On the low quality settings(1024kBit video, 128kBit audio), my computer has no problem sending the video faster than the TiVo can play it.

This is an open source project hosted on SourceForge and it uses FFMPEG to do the transcoding, so it should theoretically handle any video format that FFMPEG handles. It installs and runs as a Windows service. It is written in C#, so if anyone wants to get it working under Mono on Linux, or port it to other platforms, feel free.

Note that this is a VERY early release, the current version is 0.2.1a at the time of this posting, so this is really beta level software right now. If you run it, be prepared to experience bugs and provide feedback to the developer. But it does look like a nice application already, with some features TiVo Desktop’s TiVoToComeBack functionality could really use. And it does transcoding, which is a promised feature for the forthcoming Desktop Plus 2.4 – though this likely supports more video formats and provides more control to the user.

Check it out if you want to play with something.

TiVo is promoting the Series3 VIP upgrade, which expires on 1/31
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TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that Lexus has signed an upfront advertising commitment that allows for Lexus to capitalize on all of TiVo’s advertising platforms and research solutions. Lexus, known for retaining a high percentage of new-vehicle purchasers, in order to better engage its target audience, has renewed their agreement to utilize TiVo’s interactive and targeted advertising solutions, including the Gold Star Sponsorship on TiVo Central, Program Placement, Product Watch, and a Custom car configurator Application.

People scoff at TiVo’s ad revenue, but they must be doing something right to keep attracting premium brands to their solutions.