BigShinyThing

TiVo will release TiVoToGo recordings in formats specifically for the Playstation Portable and the video iPod. The enhanced feature will also add more copyright-protection measures in an attempt to stem piracy. However, as MIT points out, the big television networks are still pissed off:

TiVo’s plan to allow users to download TV shows and films to Apple’s iPod and Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) could strain relations with networks and studios hoping to develop revenue streams from digital distribution. Several TV and studio execs told Daily Variety that they were considering legal action against the company.

Story via the ever-dedicated PVR blog.

Meanwhile New Scientist magazine has spotted a TiVo patent application which suggests that the company is “working on a PVR that will recognise one of several individual users, and respond to their personal preferences.” The patent application describes the invention as “a multimedia mobile personalization system [which] provides a remote control that detects a user’s electronic tag, e.g. an RFID tag.” In other words, a PVR that will recognise one of several individual users, and respond to their personal preferences. Every member of a family could have a personal radio frequency tag – embedded in clothing or a piece of jewellery, for example – and the PVR’s remote control would recognise the closest tag. It would then send a corresponding ID signal to the recorder which would use the personal preferences it has built up for the tag-wearer only. TiVo users (like iPod users) already feel like their machine ‘knows them’ – “my iPod shuffle recognised my mood today” – “TiVo predicts what I want to watch …. no, really”. This just shifts the technology one step further inside Our Minds.

TiVoToGo also promises personalized viewing at a variety of locations, detailing how TiVo might forward stored shows from home to a TV in a hotel room, for example. As Slashdot points out, it remains to be seen whether hotels will be eager to help TiVo undermine their pay-per-view video revenue. But then most of that’s porn is it not?