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Wait a minute...with all the buzz about cables companies and DSL providers capping bandwidth and having open-ended ability to kick your butt off for basically any bandwidth using infraction (see 2.C in the terms) you don't think for a moment, do you, that these cable companies wouldn't kill this initiative? And that the RBOC's wouldn't eliminate this as an opportunity by limiting the use of their DSL lines?

....and here is Time Warner Cable advertising a digital PVR/tuner combo from my local carrier. And for the low, low price of $9.95 a month!

Yeah, all cable is evil.

Time Warner doesn't think it's doomed. They just launched the Explorer 8000 Digital Video Recorder...

"TiVo and SonicBlue are feeling the pressure from cable companies and satellite services, which are beginning to incorporate DVR features into the latest versions of their receivers and set-top boxes (STBs)."

"...they plan to respond to criticisms that the DVR market is doomed."

(When they made the announcement, they didn't specify who was providing the PVR technology ... it could be "in-house" or perhaps they're leasing from TiVo or someone else.)

NEWS FLASH... I just did a news.google.com search, and found this article, which states they are already testing it in 2 markets, and hope to have it in 18 markets by year's end. It is $5-$10 per month for the PVR service, and you get the box at no extra charge!

There are only two interactive things I want out of TV.

1. A full-on channel guide that goes back twelve hours and ahead a week.

2. The ability to order movies through the remote.

I had TimeWarner's Digital Cable for nearly a year and the biggest benefit wasn't the "crystal-clear video and CD-quality sound" (which, by the way, wasn't much better than analogue), but those two things above. I don't buy TV Guides and accessing tv schedule info online is annoying. I agree with you concerning the one-way nature of the television medium. It will take a sea change in the perception and attitude of the public before there's any meaningful push for interactive TV.

http://www.timewarneraustin.com/services/icontrol/ default.asp

Most of the time it's fine. It does suffer from the same quality problems that all digital content on Time Warner here in Austin does, which is in peak periods (or bad weather, eg extreme cold) you can lose the signal, or get a bit of pixellation happening in areas of the screen where there's alot of action happening. However, that doesn't happen too much - maybe 1% of the time? Unfortunately, a few times that happened in key Bab5 episodes, dammit!

Every so often I've had problems where the iControl software wouldn't launch on the settop box. A phone call to Time Warner has usually revealed problems they're having on their servers.

Incidently, time to clear up a previous post (titled "More ways for them to charge you"). The author stated that as iControl like content is digital content, it's not possible to tape. That's an incorrect statement. It's as tapeable as anything coming from the set top box.

Also, it will be functionally better than pay-per-view movies (which don't give you the ability to pause, rewind, etc.), except that you have to use your computer to view it.

Actually, on my cable system (Time Warner/AOL/ICQ/CNN...) here in Austin called icontrol (fairly content-sparse link) that has an excellent selection of movies, and it allows you to pause, rewind, suspend, etc until your 'rental period' is up. The rental periods are anywhere from 12-24 hours, iirc. I've used the system for pay-per-view before, and it works as advertised, at the same cost as a regular PPV movie.

AOLTW cable does this here in Austin, TX. It's called icontrol. I rented? paid for? one of them the other day, and it was pretty cool.. fast forward, rewind, pause.. and they have a catalouge of about 200-300 movies (and yes, billy, they do have pr0n).
Brant