Video extraction and TiVo. Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research recently raved about Windows Media Center XP over TiVo mainly due to the ability to transfer recorded shows to his laptop. Even though Media Center XP has felt a little buggy to me and I've enjoyed years of TiVo, I would agree with Gartenberg that watching shows on other devices is indeed a killer feature. This got me to thinking about TiVo's ability to move shows around to other devices, or the almost complete lack thereof.
The series 2 TiVo is now essentially a VCR with a giant blank tape that you can record anyting you want to, but you can never eject the tape. With a VCR, you can save the tapes in a closet for later use, you can take them on trips with you to enjoy what you taped, and you can go over to a friend's house to watch the tape. Those are all perfectly legitimate and more importantly, completely legal things that 99.999% of people do with VCRs. [PVRblog]