PVR Wire

TiVo is expected to announce several major new features today, all related to downloading and sharing video.

First up, TiVo plans to let you watch video downloaded from the internet on your TiVo. There's a couple of caveats here.

1. It only works with non-copyrighted material. That means you can probably get YouTube or Google Videos to work, but not iTunes or MovieLink films. TiVo CEO Tom Rogers says the company is working on deals to make copyrighted material available in the future.
2. You have to download the video to your computer and then use TiVo Desktop to transfer it to your TiVo. TiVo Desktop will convert QuickTime, WMV, and MP4 videos to MPEG-2 for watching on your set-top-box. These kind of two step processes always feel a bit inelegant to me. I'd rather just be able to browse through the videos on my TV screen.
3. The software is a free upgrade for existing users, but will cost $25 for new users.

TiVo will also announce a feature allowing you to share video between multiple TiVo boxes. In other words, you can create a personal "channel" with your home movies of the kids or the high school football game and share it with your friends and family.

This feature uses a partnership with One True Media, an online video sharing site. In order to share videos, you'd log in to One True Media's site and invite other TiVo owners to subscribe to your channel. A new folder will be created under TiVoCast on their boxes, called "Homemade Movies." I'm guessing that means copyrighted movies will also be excluded here.

And finally TiVo is expected to announce an expansion of content available via TiVoCast. For example, CBS, which recently announced a deal to make video content available on YouTube will provide programming from CBS.com, CBS news and CBS Sports. I would expect CBS to offer video clips rather than full length programs at this point.

Via Zatz Not Funny