Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2005 > June > 27 > Entry
TV for traveling
This new gadget doesn’t sound too different from what TiVo did with their TiVo-to-Go service (a feature still not activated on DirectTV TiVo boxes, I might add, grumble grumble…) or what Dish Network is planning with their ARCHOS media device.
I’ve actually taken TV shows with me on the laptop (you can DIY something like this with a simple video capture device for your PC or laptop and even burn that TV show to a DVD to take with you on a smaller-than-a-notebook portable DVD player) for flights or long road trips. It’s a nice way to rid yourself of the feeling that your TiVo is piling up programs that you’re never going to have time to watch when you get back home.
This problem with such devices is that it can take an awful long time to transfer a single show even on a fast home network. And if you’re capturing/burning TV shows yourself, it can be an adventure in converting to and from different file formats that may require buying several pieces of software.
TiVo is definitely on the right track with opening its features up to the dangerous and litigious world of networked PCs and laptops, but what’ll truly blow the field wide open is when Apple introduces its “iPod TV.” (Though you’ll never get the full effect of seeing Joey McIntyre shake his stuff on that little tiny screen.)
I think inside of two or three years, you might see more people watching their cable TV-recorded film version of “The Da Vinci Code” than reading the book on a flight.
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