A new promotion from iRiver America caught my attention: It’s offering a free 40-hour TiVo digital video recorder and a year’s paid subscription with the online purchase of its $500 Portable Media Center 120. That caused me to try the device with a mobile video service called TiVoToGo.

Unfortunately I’d have to agree the current system could use improvements to usability and seamlessness. One advantage Apple has, controlling the iTunes store, the iTunes software, and the iPod, is that they can make everything seamless because they control every step of the process. If Apple added TiVoToGo support to iTunes natively – allowing you to transfer and manage your TiVo videos from within iTunes, and then sync them to the iPod, it could be an extremely simple process.

I spotted this in ZatzNotFunny and TiVo Blog – there is a new website hosting HME applications, Apps.TV. You can use these applications without having to download anything to your PC or Mac, the instructions are on the website for setting it up on your Series2 TiVo. The current applications are more proof of concept, but it is a start. And it shows that centrally hosted HME applications are possible, so 3rd parties could offer HME content.

TVHarmony.com has three products available in beta.

I posted about AutoPilot earlier in the week – it allows you to automatically transfer shows from the TiVo, and convert them to other formats. The companion TiVo2PSP and TiVo2MPEG convert .TiVo files to PSP formatted MPEG4 files and raw MPEG2 files, respectively. From their forums, they hope to have a TiVo2iPod available early this week, for the new iPod video support.

I’ve also added a syndicated feed for their blog at tvharmony

MP3 Podcast – the TiVoShanan interview is near the end.

ZatzNotFunny has posted more TiVo news from DigitalLife. Some info on the pending 7.2.1 software, and a little bit on the HD CableCARD TiVo.