CNET’s Brian Cooley just posted an Insider Secrets video all about upgrading your TiVo with a larger hard drive, using the Instant Cake CD from DVRupgrade. I’ve often recommended Instant Cake myself, and I’ve used it in the past for imaging hard drives for a TiVo. It really is a nice all-in-one solution for TiVo disc imaging and well worth the $20.

If you’re not up for doing it yourself, you can spend a bit more and buy a ready-to-run drive that you can just drop in. And if you’re using a TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD you can use an external eSATA drive, like the My DVR Expander, of course. Or you can always buy a pre-upgraded unit to start with.

Unfortunately CNET doesn’t let you embed the Insider Secrets videos, but fortunately TiVo Blog spotted the same video re-posted to YouTube.

Friday marked a status conference between TiVo and Dish Network/EchoStar before the trial judge (transcript is here, thanks to Mainer_Ayah at InvestorVillage). Nothing was really accomplished, they’ll meet again on September 4th for a contempt hearing on the injunction against Dish Network. And it looks like the court will not be considering Dish Network’s claim of a workaround with their new software. The court will also consider enhancing the damages awarded to TiVo.

And, seemingly in response to the court not considering their workaround, Dish Network & EchoStar filed suit against TiVo in a Delaware court, asking them to find that their new software does not infringe on TiVo’s ‘389 patent. A victory would allow them to continue selling DVRs with the new software without threat of further litigation. However, it seems highly unlikely that the case will reach the court in Delaware before the Texas court meets again in September. So it isn’t clear what, if any, impact this will have on the existing case.

Multichannel News has some good coverage of the situation.

Mark noticed that Amazon is now carrying the 500GB eSATA Western Digital My DVR Expander, the only drive currently approved for use with the TiVo Series3 and the TiVo HD, in fact the only drive that works with the TiVo HD without hacking. It looks like Amazon started stocking it on April 30th. The $192.23 price is better than the full $199.99 MSRP that TiVo.com sells them for, but not the lowest price available online, for example, Buy.com has it for $172.99. I use one of these with my Series3 and it works great. I’ve also updated the site store.

TiVo is rapidly expanding their TiVoCast lineup, which is great, but they really, really need to do something to notify their users of all these new channels. I’d bet most users don’t check the lineup that often and don’t realize all the channels that have been added as of late. They should do an on-box message when they add new channels - at least do one once a month with a list of the new TiVoCast channels, new Web Video selections, and anything else that has been added in the past month, like any new HME applications. They need to do more to draw the average user in, and not just obsessive geeks like myself who keep checking manually - and those of you reading this right now.

So, right, this time there are two new items in TiVoCast. The first is Golf Tips, which is more fully Golf Tips with Joe Beck. This is yet another channel from ON Networks, as most of the recent additions have been.

Golf Tips is a show that will make your drive longer, your putts more accurate, and your game better. PGA Professional Golf Instructor Joe Beck drives home tips and advice on the links with humor and a determined eye to make viewers’ games better. From Hook Shots to the Rockport Stinger, Joe can help.

Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> Golf Tips

And the other channel is Vogue.TV, which comes, unsurprisingly, from Vogue magazine. From their FAQ:

Vogue.TV allows consumers to shop the advertising pages of Vogue and watch original video programming developed with our advertisers. Users are able to browse and buy products featured in the advertising pages of Vogue and in episodes of original programming.

Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> Vogue.TV

I’m sure we’ll be seeing more channels soon.

Now where is Tekzilla?

I enjoy watching John C. Dvorak on Cranky Geeks, which is available via TiVoCast, in part because he’ll sometimes make fairly outrageous predictions or bold statements. This time, starting with the recent announcement of TiVo making a deal to present Disney content via download, he’s suggesting that Disney should purchase TiVo.

TiVo is sitting in the sweet spot. And when I see a company like Disney playing around with a company like TiVo I begin to wonder if Disney is getting its feet wet in advance of a buyout deal. With a market cap just under a billion it might be too much to swallow, but it would give Disney a technology it could use and leverage.

I think he’s over-reaching just a wee bit. Sure, TiVo has made a deal with Disney to bring their content to TiVo downloads, and that’s a significant deal for what it is. But the deal is really through CinemaNow, the Disney content is just the major marque name involved, and the only major studio TiVo didn’t already have via Amazon Unbox. Disney’s content is also available via Apple’s iTunes and Apple TV - is Disney going to buy Apple? Steve Jobs already has a foot in both camps. TiVo has deals with Amazon, Jaman. YouTube, Rhapsody, Music Choice, etc. CinemaNow is just another content partner, I think John is reading too much into the deal.

I don’t see where it makes sense for Disney to buy TiVo. They’re a big brand name, with built-in demand. They’re better off doing deals like this one, and the Apple deal, to bring their content to more platforms, and therefore into more homes. They don’t need to own a hardware company to do that.

Details are sparse, but Time Warner Cable plans to provide access to Internet video content to their customers, to compete with the likes of TiVo and Apple TV. According to Reuters:

“Right now it’s pretty hard to get Internet stuff on your TV,” [Chief Executive Glenn Britt] said at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York.

“We’re actually going to have equipment we make available to subscribers,” he said. “It’s actually going to be a new wireless cable modem that will allow you to network everything in your house.”

Britt gave few specific details on how the service would work or when it would be available.

“Within a relatively short time … it’s going to be very easy to get Internet TV on your big screen TV,” he said, estimating it would take between one to two years to popularize such technology already sold by the likes of Apple Inc.

This is definitely a growing market with products like TiVo, Apple TV, Roku’s Netflix box, DivX Connected boxes, etc. Being able to provide access to online content will help cable MSOs compete with the consumer electronics vendors. It remains to be seen how Time Warner will handle the access, how open it will be, and which content formats it will handle.

One of the interesting things to come out of D6 is the new that Rupert Murdoch was in negotiations to buy TiVo last year, but walked away due to the price being too high. The news was casually dropped by Murdoch during his interview at the conference. Give the deals TiVo has announced over the past year, Murdoch may well be regretting the decision to walk away. This may not be as interesting as the news that TiVo is developing a ‘whole-home’ DVR, but I thought it was an interesting tidbit, things that might have been.