I’ve been using a TiVo for the last for a couple of months and thought I’d give my initial impressions.

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Intel and Sonicblue are getting together to sell what they are calling PVP, Portable Video Player. Code-named Galapagos it’s going to be equipped with a 4″ screen, 40Gb drive and based on the Intel XScale processor, this appears to be an incarnation of the device that Intel’s Emerging Platforms Lab were showing in July, although this isn’t mentioned in the news piece. The big change for this version of the device is the access to TV shows, as it will be able to download content stored on your ReplayTV.

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Intel’s Emerging Platforms Lab have designed a paperback-sized platform that will be used to play back digital audio and video content. Although always based on Intel chips including the XScale processor, the manufacturers, who will be announced later in the year, have freedom over display and storage. The initial pricing is thought to be around $500 then later moving to $399.

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UK-based company, TVcompass, has been stepping up the publicity for its forthcoming digital TV adaptor. It’s an exciting company with strong, good, new thinking behind its products.

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IBM have made a move to become involved with digital cinema (otherwise known as e-cinema or d-cinema) partnering with Kodak and bringing the operating system (OS) to the party. There’s been an underground excitement about d-cinema for a couple of years now but it’s been hampered by both the cost of the equipment and primarily by the industries inability to decide who should pay for the equipment.

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Some clever characters have written a media player for the Xbox. Currently running videos on DivX 3 & 4, it will soon have MP3 and Windows Media capabilities as well. This kind of thing has been on the Dreamcast for a while by bedroom developers, and given the supposed ease of development of the Xbox, I would have thought it’s something Microsoft would want to encourage. Apparently they’re trying to take legal action to stop it.

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Murmurs that the frequency that was/is used by ITV Digital in the UK could be sub-divided for wireless broadband access.

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The sales on the Microsoft Xbox have been lower than expected, so they have now downwardly adjusted the sales targets from 4.5m to 6m to 3.5m to 4m). Where they are different from the game console makers is in the fact broadband and a hard drive are included with the unit, giving them a natural advantage in broadband, multi-user games.

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I was briefly at a MS PocketPC social event in London last night and MS had taken the opportunity of making a large numbers of Xboxes available (around 30-40). It’s no shock that the attendees were keen to play, they must be the perfect market, but they were incredibly popular. So why isn’t Xbox selling in the numbers anticipated - the price maybe?

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There have been rumours buzzing around about the possibility of many of the $5-10k HDTV set that have been sold in the US won’t be able to display HDTV by the time it’s actually publicly launched. A news item appears to confirm the rumour. Discussions between the Hollywood studios and equipment manufacturers has lead to the creation of the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI). HDMI will be the interface between the receiving set top box and the screen/monitor, enabling the content to remain encrypted up to the point it is displayed. By unscrambling at the point it is actually viewed, the studios hope to reduce unauthorised copying of films.

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