I, for one, would love for Google to make a serious DVR.
In that space, you basically have two DRM enabled players (Microsoft and TiVo) who sell hardware/software that can be used with any cable provider for pay channels, and a variety of 3rd parties that don't have DRM support and thus have to resort to hacky methods like IR control, reencoding from analog, etc.
If Google could turn their GoogleTV into a DVR, and give it some new/interesting features (Streaming ala Slingbox to Android?) beyond the social stuff they're trying now, it could be a hit.
I think that the DVR, and by extension cable/broadcast/satellite providers, have peaked and are going to be replaced with on-demand options. I'm in the process of cutting the cord and I couldn't be happier to have entertainment on my terms and not some provider.
Now, if they could take SageTV and mix it into GoogleTV then I think it would be much more interesting than another DVR product. However, it would have to offer more than Roku+Netflix/Hulu Plus to be a contender at this point.
The DVR story is already over, it was a stop-gap technology. Google is entering the IPTV business which threatens the cable television industry and is the real reason ISPs are raising bandwidth costs and lowering their caps.
Right now its virtually impossible to create an HD DVR without DRM support. The only way to do it economically is via a cable card, the cheapest HD on the fly encoder I've seen is around $1000.
For GoogleTV to really take off they need to bring the price down at around $300 its way too expensive.
I think you're right... as someone who was very much involved in the whole diy pvr scene, I was pining away for that card to come out (That hauppauge card was even the last "news" post on my site byopvr.com).
By the time the card did come out, I no longer cared. I hate DRM with a passion, but it seems I wanted to spend less time screwing with HTPC and more time enjoying content. A PS3 and netflix streaming serves the need for me nicely, along with cough usenet cough ;) for HD content.
I haven't seen it in ages, but I used to really like SageTV's UI, so maybe GoogleTV will get a better interface out of this...
That's the avenue I came up with as well. I hated running out of hard disk space, and the HD PVR kept overheating and not recording stuff. Of course, I kept the htpc, but moved to netflix and cough.
off topic, but i find i often go right to the comments on HN because there's more insight to be found than in the articles themselves and i can get the gist of the article from the comments. i wonder what value there might be in mining the discussion to determine the meaning of the stories?
I do this too. Also, the comments don't have ads and the page loads much faster.
I think it'd be a great idea to mine the meaning of stories from the article. It might be similar to what Yelp does with their reviews and summaries of what's good about a restaurant.
Most of the problems associated with DVRs are the ties with carriers. Think outside the box guys, think about what a phone was then (hint: just a phone) and what they are now, pocket computers. I believe this is what will happen to DVRs. You will soon forget that they where just tied to specific providers, be it cable or sat. In the future ou will have a DVR thousands of internet streams, apps, downloads, on demands, whatevers (Heck, we are getting close to this now with Boxee, Rokus, etc).
One thing I hope that doesn't change too much is the current discovery model (Streams of curated channels pumped into the box). A lot of what is watched on TV is through channel flipping, and 'discovering' content that you would not other wise watch if it was purely on demand.
In that space, you basically have two DRM enabled players (Microsoft and TiVo) who sell hardware/software that can be used with any cable provider for pay channels, and a variety of 3rd parties that don't have DRM support and thus have to resort to hacky methods like IR control, reencoding from analog, etc.
If Google could turn their GoogleTV into a DVR, and give it some new/interesting features (Streaming ala Slingbox to Android?) beyond the social stuff they're trying now, it could be a hit.