Easy listening: the hard disk is shaping the future of home entertainment

Custom Home, May-June, 2003 by Rebecca Day

That has been personal video recording in phase one. Now TiVo and ReplayTV are entering the next phase using home networking to liberate stored programs from stand-alone boxes. TiVo's Series2 recorders have USB ports which allow homeowners to send a program from a main TiVo box to client boxes in remote rooms. The programs are protected by digital coding, which prevents users from distributing TV programs over the Internet.

The latest ReplayTV boxes, on the other hand, are equipped with Ethernet ports and allow ReplayTV subscribers to e-mail recorded programs to up to 15 other Replay subscribers. Encrypted movies can't be sent, and upload time for a two-hour movie would require an overnight commitment. Despite those caveats, Hollywood hasn't taken well to the concept and 28 studios currently have a lawsuit pending against the company. The outcome will likely set the stage for consumer distribution of copyrighted audio and video content in the future.

The concept of a hard-disk-based home media server is not likely to go away, however. The latest boxes from TiVo and Replay don't just allow people to access stored TV programs from remote TVs. As part of a home network connected to a PC, you can access digital images from a PC's hard drive and show them as a slide show on TV.

TiVo's Home Media Option opens up the possibilities even further. TiVo has contracted with the Corbis Collection--a digitized collection of more than 2 million works of fine art and photography--and those images will be available to TiVo subscribers for display on TV.

An Internet connection adds another convenience to personal video recording. In the past you could only schedule recordings by using the remote control and the onscreen program guide. Now, TiVo and Replay subscribers can schedule recordings from the companies' Web sites. Even when you're traveling, you can program the box to record a show.

When structured wiring pundits first began sowing seeds for the networked home, they projected home entertainment would provide the killer applications to drive the market. Cutting-edge networked audio and video servers are proving them right. The future of home entertainment is all over the house.

Rebecca Day specializes in writing about home electronics. She can be reached at rebecca362@aol.com.