TiVo rocked the convergence boat this week by announcing plans to allow its subscribers to download television shows onto portable devices, including the video iPod and Sony's PSP. But the transferring process will reportedly take more than two hours to get a single show onto the devices and just a few of those would max out the video capacity of the iPod. Also, the user will have to transfer the program over a home network onto a PC, use TiVo software to convert it into the proper compression format and then begin the two-hour download. Compared to a DVD recorder and laptop setup with its 10-minute transfer time, and watching TiVo on your 2.5-in. screen seems all the more ridiculous. Also, TiVo said the service is only available to owners of TiVo Series2 receivers who also have a home network. Some say that's less than 100,000 subscribers.
For more on the TiVo-iPod solution:
- check out this article from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)