TiVo has now been granted a patent that may mean the death of one of the most important features on any DVR. The TiVo patent covers the company’s Season Pass software that resides on its DVRs. What the patent really covers is any system that allows the DVR to resolve conflicts when scheduled recordings overlap.

Without that software, the DVR would not know what shows to record and what show to skip. TiVo is a big fan of suing anyone who treads close to one of its patents so expect wide scale suits to be filed any day now since every DVR on the globe has this feature. A reported workaround may be to put the scheduling software on a remote server somewhere since the patent is for client side software only.

[via DavisFreeberg.com]

Mentalfloss has the details on that as well as on 7 other hi-tech names, like Toyota’s Prius (whose plural is still Prius according to the Japanese automaker), and Wikipedia (“wiki” means “fast” in Hawaiian). It’s something you can use to strike up a conversation with that cute geek you’ve been eyeing. You just walk up to her and go, “Did you know that Hulu means “butt”?” Nevermind. It’s all useless information.

Also, as you can see I have once again leveled-up my Photoshop skillz. They’re now at a world class level -7.

[via Gizmodo]

There’s not a whole lot of information to be found about this cool design, but I can tell you this: the light is made by madreinspain. There’s no pricing info, but their other lights seem reasonably priced in the €100 (about $150 USD) range.

Now if only you could wire them up so they actually controlled your TiVo or something… that would be even cooler.

[via DesignZen]

At first glance, the TV looks like it belongs in one of yesteryear’s living rooms- until you realize how thin it is. The case can be made in custom sizes and a variety of woods. The panels in front are designed to look like old TV speaker boxes.

Designed by Wilkerson Furniture in LA, it’s not in production yet so pricing info is not available. I’m guessing, um, expensive. But even though this design looks great, it’s got a major flaw- where the heck does the TiVo go?

The new model, currently known as the Series 3 “Lite” (model #TCD652160) will retail for about $299, and packs in a pretty nice feature list for the price. It’s got dual MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoders, so it should be able to handle any signal you throw at it. Storage is limited to a 160GB hard drive, but that still should record around 180 hours of SD, or 20 hours of HD programming if I’m doing my math right.

With the removal of the schmancy OLED screen and no THX certification, the new model doesn’t offer some of the bells and whistles of the original Series 3. However, for $299, I think they’ll sell like hot cakes. Now all they need to do is get these to work with DirecTV and I’ll be happy.

[via Engadget HD]

The two companies reached an agreement way back in March 2005 to offer TiVo’s applications running on Comcast hardware. The most significant integration combines TiVo’s best-in-class user interface with Comcast’s substantive On Demand programming service.

There’s no mention of an exact release date, but now that the software has been approved by Comcast, I’d expect to see them start offering the TiVo option out “any day now.”

[via Reuters]

The long-awaited Series 3 features a 250GB hard drive, enough to store about 32 hours of high-def content or about 300 hours of standard-def programming. The device also features dual tuners, allowing simultaneous recording on two channels. In addition, the Series 3 features dual CableCARD slots so it’s the first high definition TiVo to support cable. It’s also the first DVR to pass THX

According to the tipster, the device is listed now in Best Buy’s computer system with a scheduled “in stock” date of September 17th with a Best Buy SKU of 7974418 (UPC is 400079744186 and Model number is TCD648250B). Pricing is said to be listed as $799, but no official release date has been made known. That all said, it’s quite possible that these new DVRs will be available for purchase in the next 30 days.

The Series 3 is the first high definition box to be manufactured by TiVo (I don’t count the wonky Hughes HR10-250 DirecTiVo), and features six tuners: two analog, two ATSC for over-the-air digital broadcasts and two QAM for digital cable. The box also features dual CableCard slots so you can receive all of your cable channels without additional hardware. The device is said to have a 250GB SATA hard drive and the ability to add an external drive to expand capacity.