A company called SIMable has produced a little chip that they call the "10-second solution" for unlocking carrier-tethered GSM handsets. The gimmick is that, instead of unlocking the phone itself—and risking invalidation of your warranty— the chip works on the SIM card, provided you punch a hole in the SIM.

Yes, I said “punch a hole.” The SIMable card lies flat against the SIM, and you first have to perform the following surgical procedure. At least the hole-puncher comes free with the £16.99 chip:

For certain 3G phones including the 8GB Nokia N95, Nokia E51, Sony Ericsson W200 and others to maintain “full 3G functionality,” you will have to make an addition cut to the card itself:It’s not clear if SIMable is shipping to the US, though there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t work here. There’s also no mention of Apple’s iPhone on the site, although the Inquirer mentions it in the first paragraph of their own writeup. Hopefully SIMable is just getting around to that, after testing on 70 or so other, more popular phones.

Update: Corrections were made to the post following some clarifying comments (thanks!). As far as this being a copy of other products, that may very well be the case, although SIMable maintains that it is not:

NOTE – SIMable is not linked in any way to other similar products and enables full 3G functionality. We include a free customised cutting press ruling out any messing around with scissors.

[SIMable via The Inquirer]

Today, a startup called ZeeVee is launching the ZvBox, a three-part plan for getting all the good HD video content from your PC out to all the TVs in the house:
• The box itself converts the video from the PC's VGA port into a high-def channel and sends it out to your home's coax cable network.
• A PC app acts as a launcher for all the good PC-based internet video clients, like Hulu, Joost and even Microsoft's own Media Center.
• The remote controls not just your TV, but the app on the PC too, giving you decent control over the otherwise PC-locked experience.

No, you don’t have deja vu: Two companies you never heard of launched similar-sounding interactive TV boxes within a few hours of each other. But this one is quite different: It doesn't mess with antennae or try to get in bed with cable or DSL providers. It's just a nice tidy box that sends all the world's content to all TVs in your house—without set-top boxes in each room. There are some catches, of course.

The first catch is that the box-and-remote combo costs $500. Sure, you only need one kit for the whole house (unless you want additional remotes, but every TV would get the same experience anyhow, so there’s no point). But $500 is pretty steep.

Another catch is that the content itself is a little up in the air. Yes, there are plenty of services that let you buy or rent movies on a PC, and many more coming along that give you piecemeal content for free. But everyone does it differently, and you will have to become master of many interfaces with that one remote.

The launcher app, called Zviewer (what else?), is useful to aggregate all the different programs you’ll want supplying you with video, and it also lists all of the BitTorrent and other video on your hard drive, not to mention photos and music. But there’s no way to bring all web video into one seamless interface, and though ZeeVee will try to do just that, they admit that the beginnings will be a tad humbler.

I do like this concept. As soon as you connect your VGA out to the ZvBox and connect that to the coax network in your house, it scopes out the channels occupied by your cable box, and picks one that’s not. Any TV with an ATSC tuner will see the ZeeVee stream as a high-def channel, and display it as such via the coax input most cable and satellite customers have generally forgotten about. You put the ATSC tuner to use, your coax cable gets new life, and you get an easy way to toggle from your other cable content to your PC’s video bidness.

At this point, it’s still a work in progress. Though the company promises a June ship date, the hardware shots are just renderings. The software, barely in beta, will only run on Windows XP and Vista, though ZeeVee assures us a Mac version will be out this year. I am a little leery of trying to use PC apps while sitting at my couch, so hopefully the software itself will handle most of my needs.

Promotional screenshots shown below depict some pretty nice media management, but the company admits that these are more aspirational, and will not represent the initial user experience:
If you think about it, the PC is kind of arbitrary here. I asked Brian Mahoney, ZeeVee director of marketing, if the company couldn’t all the same turn this into a whole-house extender for my TiVo HD, or maybe a video iPod, and he said, “We can indeed take the video inputs from any device. That is a path we’re looking at in the future.”

My question for you, dear Giz readers, is this: Remote and PC software aside, how easy is it to build the box ZeeVee is talking about? And is it worth $200 to $250? Maybe it is. If you’re really eager, it’s going on pre-order at Amazon today, with plans to ship in June. If I were you, I’d wait until your friends at Gizmodo at least saw the thing in person before shelling out five bills. [ZeeVee]

There’s never been a better time to void the warranty on your MacBook Pro and upgrade to one of those sweet 2.5″ WD Scorpio 320GB drives. That was what made me throw caution to the wind and attempt a Time Machine-assisted swap. The good news is, it works as billed. You get a bit-for-bit transfer to the virgin drive with minimal fuss. The bad news is, if you don’t use a little trick we discovered today, you probably won’t get it to work at all.

I said “void the warranty” and I meant it. The process I went through today means it’ll be harder for me to complain to Apple if things get weird, so be cautious! Given the experience I’ve had, I think it will get easier and easier to swap HDDs, like RAM, because on the software side, at least as far as Apple goes, installing a fresh 2.5″ SATA turns out to be straightforward, and ready for novices.

The key here is that there’s no preparation needed for the new drive. As long as you’ve backed up your old drive to an external disk using Time Machine, you can prepare for the grand opening. I won’t bore you with gory details, except to say that I found a good bit of guidance from this dude’s blog.
The Process
From here on in, this issue may just as well apply to MacBooks and even iMacs as well as MacBook Pros, so everyone should take note.

Once you open up the system and swap out the drives, you can set the old drive aside, hopefully never to use it again. Assuming all went well, you restart the system and insert an OS X Leopard installation DVD. You won’t need the OS installer on it, but you will need it to act as mediator between the Time Machine backup drive and the newly installed blank drive. Once it boots up (you may need to manually restart to get it to work right) follow these instructions CAREFULLY:

1. Choose your language.

2. At the main screen, choose Disk Utility from the Utilities pull-down menu.

3. Select the drive itself and click on Partition.

4. In the Partition menu, select 1 Partition and Options… where you choose GUID Partition Table. Click OK then Apply, then say “yes” to whatever warning comes up.

5. Once you have reformatted the drive, close the Disk Utility window.

6. Do Not Go Forward. Instead, when you see the main Welcome screen, click the Back button, which takes you to the language select page. It sounds silly but DO IT. This shakes the system into action.

7. Once you have reselected your language and are back on the Welcome screen, click Utilities and select Restore System From Backup…

8. The process should go smoothly from that point on. You simply select appropriate disks to copy your chosen backup data from your Time Machine drive to the new internal drive, as shown in the following sequence:

The Back Story
Originally I tried my swap without first clicking back to the language page, and the installer could not find my new hard drive. Disk Utility saw it and happily formatted it with the GUID partition, but even on the second pass, the installer wouldn’t show it as a target option. All I got was this hollow emptiness:
I spoke with Jeerun Chan at Western Digital and asked him to try the same process, which yielded the same results. Then I tried it with another virginal hard drive, this time a 160GB SATA from Seagate. Between the two of us, we ran this test on three different configurations, with the same negative results.

The obvious but depressing solution was to just run the Leopard system installer, then use the migration tool to back up from my Time Machine drive. It’s fairly smooth, and smart if you want a clean install on your new drive, but it’s boring: it takes a few steps, and they’re all obvious. I wanted a bit-for-bit dump from backup to new drive, fully automatic.

As I was installing Leopard on my second drive, the phone rang: it was Jeerun with the crazy back-button technique. I don't know how he thought to do it—I don't even think he knows, but the fact remains: when you have formatted your destination drive and are on the Welcome screen, click the back button and the process will work. If you don’t click it, well, in our experience, it seems you will fail in your objective.

Obviously, this won’t work if you don’t regularly do a full system backup in Time Machine. If the omitted folders in your Time Machine options include system files, you won’t be able to do this.

In truth, it might make sense to backup only personal files, especially since this process requires a Leopard install disk even to write the whole image back onto the new drive. Chen swears by SuperDuper, which is perhaps a better pro technique, one that doesn’t require a system-install DVD. Still, I wanted to see if this major boast of Time Machine was all that it was cracked up to be. It is, and the end result will be tasty, as long as you don’t forget that one little catch.

As with my last Time Machine HDD discovery, this one involves a little hocus pocus. While this method works, you may have your own trick, or a more scientific approach. If so, please share it in the comments below, and spare any fellow Mac users a frustrating afternoon.

Thanks to Jeerun and Heather at WD!

What better way to take pictures of yourself Spiderman hurtling through the concrete jungle than with a mini tripod that sticks to "almost anything", from trees and poles to fences, rocks and walls? Monster Pod's stickiness comes from a "patented viscoelastic polymer"—I love it when SkyMall talks science. As far out as it seems, this thing sells for the low low price of $29.99, a great deal, at least until Make Magazine explains how to do it with a single bolt and 19 cents worth of string and chewing gum. [SkyMall via Crave]

The bad news is, we have discovered a Leopard-related issue that may very well throw a monkey wrench into your Time Machine. Anyone trying to use Time Machine with a previously PC-formatted drive could be at risk. The good news is, there is an easy—albeit none-too-obvious—fix. Here's the dilly-o:

After I upgraded my MacBook Pro to OS X Leopard, the first thing I did was grab a brand-new Maxtor USB drive and format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility, just like I had countless times before. As soon as I erased the disk, Time Machine popped up as promised, and asked if it could use the disk for backup. I said yes, and was on my merry way. Only I wasn’t.

Time Machine ran for a bit, and then crapped out after about 10GB. I went into Disk Utility and saw that although the partition was formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled), the volume itself still said FAT32. I clicked Erase to reformat the drive, and got the format failure error you see above.

I tried this with FAT-formatted drives from Seagate, Iomega and HP as well. Each time I saw the same thing. I could reformat the partition to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and Time Machine would recognize it. Get Info would say that it was formatted correctly. But Disk Utility showed that the volume was formatted for PC. Inevitably, if the Time Machine backup was greater than 10GB, there were problems. Worst of all, if I dared try to format the volume for Mac, I would get the dreaded error, and the disk would be temporarily unmountable.

Not only did I vary drives, but I tested the problem on various systems too. I tried it booting from the Leopard DVD, with the same results. Ditto when I tried it using my wife’s Leopard-upgraded MacBook Pro. (Yes, his n’ hers MBPs. You can insert your “awwww” here.) The end result was that I couldn’t break the FAT grip on these damn drives.

I made some calls, I talked to some people, and eventually here was the solution: you wipe the hell out of the drive by creating new and different partitions. So, do not head to the Erase tab in Disk Utility to prep a PC-formatted drive for Time Machine. Instead:

• Go to the Partition tab. Create two partitions. Under Options, select GUID Partition Table (what you would use to make a Mac OS boot disk) and click OK then Apply.

• Once your partitions are in place, do it again, reverting back to just one partition, but still keeping the GUID Partition Table option. Click OK and Apply again, and at this point you should be cool.

• To be safe, you can then go to Erase and set formatting for Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then format it once and for all. But when you get there, you will probably see that your volume is already formatted in the right way.

UPDATE: Some people have gotten this to work without creating two partitions. If you like, try creating just a single partition, but using the GUID Partition Table option. This may be all it takes to break the chokehold.

Using this method, I have gotten all of the disks to work just fine with Time Machine, and I don’t anticipate any problems in the future.

OK, I know, quite a bit of nerdiness, but I wanted to get out there and tell you about the problem I encountered, in case you are having the same troubles, or plan on getting there sooner or later. Also, this solution is actually a workaround of sorts. My hope is that Apple can update Disk Utility with a stronger form of disk erasing that doesn’t require so many manual steps, but if I am missing something obvious, I’d love to hear it. Please share any troubles you’ve had, or any better solutions you’ve cooked up.

Special thanks to Dorian and Ken!

Normally I don’t get this jazzed about desktop PCs, but the Gateway One is special. From the sleek yet substantial design to the quiet, powerful core, it’s a real statement, especially from the cow-pocked South Dakota underdog.
Let me take you on a guided tour:

Setup is as easy as a laptop. Connect the power adapter to the main unit, and you’re rollin’. The wireless keyboard and seamless “river rock” mouse are pre-paired. The main unit has everything you need and nothing you don’t. Its beautiful 19″ widescreen LCD has a resolution of 1440×900. Beneath the screen are speakers hidden under the glossy plastic face. They are NXTs, but they sound better than any NXTs I’ve ever heard.

To the left side is a panel with three USB ports, a FireWire port, a 5-in-1 memory card reader, audio output for speakers and microphone in.
There’s a USB camera that sits on top, nestled into a mini USB port. It’s got a built-in microphone. (I guess I lied. Gateway could have gone even more minimalist: you really don’t need the speaker or mic jacks at all!) The camera makes the box look a tad dorky, but you only need it when you’re Skyping, so who cares?
On the right-hand side is a disc slot. The drive is what you'd expect on the premium end, a super multi DVD burner with double-layer capability—not that you'll ever use it to its full extent. Blu-ray and HD DVD read and write are not yet available.
The power brick serves a very cool function as outboard media hub. It’s got four USB ports of its own, plus SPDIF and optical audio outputs to connect to an A/V receiver (for up to 7.1 surround sound), plus an IR blaster jack and an Ethernet port. In other words, Gateway has smartly hidden all those ugly but essential wires at your feet, instead of letting them stick out of your computer. The One has but one cable, sticking out of its chrome-plated rear end.
Ethernet is optional. Gateway pulled an Apple and integrated serious Wi-Fi in there. It’s got MIMO, 802.11a/b/g and even N Dual Band, if you are so equipped. Good future-proofing. Another example of future proofing is the second SATA II drive slot, right next to the first slot, which houses a 500GB 7200rpm drive. (RAM access is just as easy.)
There’s more in the box if you want it, including a analog/digital TV tuner and a USB fax/modem. I skipped them for now, but you never know.

The remote reminds you that this, like every other Vista Home Premium or Ultimate system, is also a Windows Media Center Edition PC. So the tuner might come in handy, though I’d prefer CableCard.

For having a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and an ATI HD 2600XT video processor, it even runs fairly quiet. Gateway says under 30dB. It also uses a third less power than traditional desktops.

The premium Gateway One will be sold at Best Buy exclusively for $1,799. Two other lower-powered editions will be sold at gateway.com for $1,299 and $1,599. All of them will feature all of the pieces I’ve shown in this demo.

I may have some negative things to say later but for now, I am a true fan. It’s the thoughtful design elements make the Gateway One unique, and uniquely enjoyable, and I’ll leave you with three examples:
• You use the touch-scroll mouse intuitively, without thinking, even though it's not the typical mouse interaction.
• The Media Center remote's d-pad is all one piece, built for full-tilt thumb action.
• In the rear, a chrome hinge rests on a broad wheel. Not only does this allow you to tilt the seemingly immobile body, but it acts to brace the One in the event it gets jarred.
[Gateway One]

Rather than just tell you what’s great (and terrible) about the hot new Vudu video-on-demand box, I thought I’d show you, so come on…

The setup experience is so amazingly simple, it makes TiVo look complex. (Of course, compared to what this simple, broadband-connected video server does, TiVo is complex.
Speaking of TiVo, Vudu’s remote is incredible, with five buttons and a clickable jog dial that you can intuit in record time. It’s weird how quickly you can use it without looking. By the way, the remote is RF, not IR, so you don’t have to point it at the box for it to work.

One of Vudu’s setbacks is that it is, alas, a set-top box. In a world where game consoles and cable boxes are inevitable, this box, though small, still presents a stacking challenge.
But there is a cool solution: since Vudu’s remote is RF, and talks to that little metal antenna you see at the back of the box, you can stash the box anywhere that you’d stash any device with a video processor and a spinning 250GB hard drive. Like a cabinet drawer…
Hiding it away (with or without my cat Wade) means one less thing you have to look at. While we can thank the RF remote for this, an RF remote does mean one more thing (*cough*PS3 Blu-ray remote*cough*) that you can’t replace with a standard universal.
The home screen, which pops on 20 seconds after you first power up, and is instantly on in most occasions, is a nice example of how organized the Vudu interface is.
Though it's the home screen that you see when you first get started, there are some tweaking options, should you dig into them. I loved the overscan adjustment—you'd be shocked how helpful it is.
When you scroll through the constantly changing promoted movies on the home screen, you can see which ones are for rent…
…and which ones you can buy.
I found that most studio films at this time are rentals, mostly at $3.99. There are plenty of foreign and/or “special interest” movies you can buy, and some of those that you can rent for less, say $1.99. Frankly, the rental aspect of this proprietary box appeals much more than the ownership one.

There are many easy ways to hunt for a movie in Vudu. The genre search is fun, because you can select more than one genre to find interesting combinations like Sci-Fi Documentary…
…and yes, Gay & Lesbian Horror. (You know you were curious.)
You can search for a director or actor by name. In this search of Spielberg, you can get a sense that the Vudu catalog is not totally up to snuff. Yes, that is the entire Vudu Spielberg collection.
Some actors and directors are missing entirely. Being a Back To The Future fan, I had to search for Robert Zemeckis, but typing in his name, or even just ZEME, yielded zilch.
My main criticism with the Vudu is that while there are plenty of extra-sweet options like these…
…there just aren’t enough good hits when you go searching. Here’s a clue: in a search for “Coppola,” Sofia had two movies, and Francis Ford had 3, none of which were the Godfather.

The good news is, Vudu has designed an excellent interface and a very satisfying alternative platform for delivering movies. I love browsing and watching movies on this thing—the instant gratification is awesome!

As we told you before, the system operates with both a central server and a P2P network, balancing each other to ensure an instant on-demand experience. During my week-long testing over both DSL and cable connections, I never once had more than a tiny video hiccup, and though you can’t fast-forward straight away, the video can get to be 20 or 30 minutes ahead of you as you continue watching, so eventually fast-forwarding is an option.

And the picture looks stupendous. Even though the source material is (currently) 480p, that little box upscales that stuff to your desired resolution. In both 720p and 1080p tests, it looked great, perhaps better than a DVD. Here’s a look, though even Ben Stiller getting slapped by a monkey doesn’t truly do this thing justice:
Beyond my loudly voiced complaints about content, all I can say is, I wish it were a lot cheaper. Yeah, that’s right, Vudu is selling these things for $400. So you can pay more money to buy or rent movies from them.

You could save the money by connecting your PC to your TV and renting from CinemaNow or Movielink. At the moment, both have slightly better catalogs, though that will change. Normally I don't whine about high prices, but I think $400 is a little too much for a box that doesn't come with any free content. There's never been a better case for the razor-and-blades model. With a pricetag like that, Vudu is certainly not going to scare the bejeezus out of Blockbuster Video—not nearly as much as it rightly should.

If you’ve been saving up your nickels to get a $800 TiVo Series3, you just got yourself a $500 bonus prize. Today TiVo releases the TiVo HD, a scaled-back version of the original Series3 that lists for just $299. We got our hands on one, and managed the even more complicated task of convincing Cablevision to install two CableCARDs. Now that it’s up and running, I can’t think of a single reason to ever plug in that Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD again. (Oh yeah, the TiVo’s a loaner.) The great news: To reach the low-low-price of $300, TiVo only cuts the corners we’d cut ourselves. It is functionally a Series 3, minus the fluff.

Big Brother, Meet Little Brother
Although the TiVo HD is built on the Series3 platform, it’s not exactly an update. Here’s the breakdown:

• The original Series3 can record 300 hours of standard-def video and 32 hours of HD on a 250GB internal; the TiVo HD can record 180 hours of SD and just 20 hours of HD on a 160GB drive.

• It's not THX certified, but it's got the coaxial cable and antenna inputs, plus all the requisite outputs: HDMI, component, S-Video and composite. It also has an optical audio out.

• As you can see in the gallery, it has a dual CableCARD slot so you can record two shows at once (and watch a third, too). One of the slots even supports M-Card, for multistreaming, so you wouldn't need two separate cards. I am not entirely sure if you can use it to go hog wild and record three shows at once—it may not surprise you that Cablevision never mentioned it as an option when I ordered the CableCARDs.

• Instead of the original Series3's glowing OLED display, TiVo HD has an array of multicolored status-indicator LEDs. That's the extent of the glowing, too—unlike the pricier Series3, this one has a standard TiVo remote, happily unchanged these 10 long years.

• TiVo HD has an eSATA port on the back, same as its big brother, so expansion will be easy. It also has hardware support for AVC (H.264) and VC-1, though there still isn’t any software implementation of this talent. We’re waiting!

• As I just sort of alluded, nothing is different on the software side of things. Any rumors suggesting that TiVoToGo is available in the TiVo HD are incorrect at this point, though we'd love to see someone wave a magic wand and make that happen. The few screenshots I included in the gallery are intended to show you the similarities: it's all there, even though you're paying less than half the price.

Hands On
Though I had been suffereing at the hands of the loathed Explorer 8300HD for some time, I dreaded calling Cablevision and asking for CableCARDs. Fortunately, they knew what I was up to, and—after a couple of visits—were able to make it work. The trouble was not technical. The cards worked just fine. The trouble was that Cablevision installers are not allowed to be in your house when you go through the 20-minute setup, which they claim takes between 4 and 24 hours. In truth, the most time-consuming part of the process is waiting for the CableCARDs to take hold once they are installed. That took hours, but required the cable guy. Can I just say that I hate when people who don't know squat make up dumb rules? Well, I just said it.

The rest of the setup was super easy. TiVo provided the $60 Wi-Fi USB dongle, though you can use others, or just connect via Ethernet. I always love setting TiVo remotes to control the TV; it’s a simple thing that any remote in the world can do, but I rarely do it with my cable remotes. Having that reassuring wizard is just a better incentive.

Once all of that was working, I was back in TiVo Country. I could search for shows without growing a beard in the process, jumping to Swivel Search to do stream-of-consciousness browsing. I ended up jumping from The Daily Show to a TiVoCast channel of content from The Onion. Everything we’ve discussed in the recent past is there: Amazon Unbox downloads, One True Media video and photo sharing, Yahoo! and Fandango. But most of all, it’s a $300 way to unlock the HD cable subscription I pay a ridiculous amount of money for but can’t navigate using standard cable boxes.

OK, it’s not all perfect. My guess is that, since I had an early unit, there was some bugginess that will be fixed in the near term, including:

• Messed-up video decoding; I often got that that weird psychedelic MPEG frame lag, and some entire scenes of standard-def video had a bad iridescent quality, though that could have been due to a crappy analog source.

• At least one HD channel remains scrambled, and not a premium one. OK, I admit, it's CBS. I just got caught off guard by how funny The New Adventures of Old Christine is.

• Worst—though perhaps most fixable—of all: when I fast forward through lengthy stretches of content, the cursor jumps and skips, so that I end up way far away from where I want to be. Again, though I'm a bit traumatized, my guess is that it'll be fixed in the next firmware update.

• Also, as you know, decommissioning your cable box means no one-touch VOD. I like VOD, I will admit. But I am trying to figure out if I like it most because it's a way of getting around the frustrating user interface of cable DVRs.

How to get one
As you know, TiVo still has a monthly fee, one that can be as high as $17 per month if you don’t commit to anything over a year, or as low as $9 per month, if you pay, up front, $299 for three full years of service. (That’s a special offer. It’s been around a while, but it might disappear at any time.) I figure if you’re already saving $500 in not buying the deluxe Series3, might as well pay $300 of it back for the better service plan.

TiVo is taking pre-orders starting right this second. (According to one tipster, they actually started taking orders earlier, but quickly stopped.) The units themselves will start showing up in early August. If you are one of those sorry sons o’ guns who recently bought a full-priced Series3, I really hope you can dig up the receipt.

TiVo Unveils New Attractively Priced TiVo® HD DVR—the Ultimate Companion to HDTVs

The new TiVo® HD DVR seamlessly combines ease of use, new content and affordability.

ALVISO, Calif.– July 24, 2007 – TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), announced today the launch of a new TiVo high definition DVR, delivering a premium HD experience at an affordable price. Starting today, consumers can pre-order TiVo HD at www.tivo.com for just $299.99, with product expected to arrive on retail shelves in early August. The new TiVo HD DVR is the ultimate HDTV companion, maximizing the HD cable experience by combining a new popular price with the clarity of HD programming and our Emmy® award-winning TiVo™ service. The new TiVo HD is also a Digital Cable Ready set-top-box that works seamlessly with any cable provider in the U.S. Moreover, the new product also enables the latest and greatest exclusive TiVo service features such as Movie & TV Downloads from Amazon.com, Home Movie Sharing and universal Swivel™ search, delivering the best of broadband video directly to the television set.

“TiVo HD extends the TiVo experience to an even wider audience than ever, giving sports and entertainment enthusiasts the ultimate companion to their HDTV set,” said Tom Rogers, CEO and President of TiVo. “It is the ultimate media centerpiece for the living room with the broadest selection of broadband content, right alongside your favorite broadcast and cable programs, giving HDTV viewers more choice and control than they’ve ever had before. And it can be used in place of the customer’s existing cable box.”

The TiVo HD is designed to fit seamlessly with home entertainment centers, replacing cable boxes while complimenting other entertainment devices. It is compatible with digital cable, analog cable and digital antenna (ATSC). TiVo HD offers 20 hours of HD or up to 180 hours of standard definition content. The new TiVo HD DVR allows users to record two HD channels at the same time, while watching a third previously recorded show. With a built-in Ethernet jack, two CableCARDâ„¢ slots and USB ports, TiVo HD also provides advanced connectivity and easy networking, making it simple to access an additional suite of exclusive TiVo features.

“TiVo HD is a perfect complement to the HDTV sets that are quickly becoming the standard for home entertainment,” said Jim Denney, Vice President of Product Marketing at TiVo. “With an affordable price and uncompromised quality, TiVo HD is an obvious choice for anyone with a passion for home entertainment and HD programming.”
TiVo HD includes access to a number of renowned TiVo features, furthering the difference between the TiVo service and generic DVR competitors, such as:

• Movie & TV Downloads – In partnership with Amazon.com, TiVo brings you Amazon Unboxâ„¢ on TiVo®, allowing you to download thousands of movies and TV shows straight to your TiVo DVR. Amazon Unbox on TiVo allows you to rent or buy movies from Amazon Unbox using your remote, download them to your TiVo box over your home network, and enjoy them right on your television set whenever you want. The movies you want are always in stock and new releases are available for purchase the same day they arrive on DVD. Best of all, order with your TiVo remote from the comfort of your living room and your rentals and purchases end up in your Now Playing list, right where you’d expect them to be. It’s like having an entire video store connected to your TV.

• Universal Swivelâ„¢ Search – Exclusive to the TiVo service, universal Swivel search lets you quickly find everything you want in the world of broadcast and broadband television with a single, powerful search. It's the first truly TV centric onscreen search tool that allows subscribers to explore and discover broadcast, cable, and broadband content in an easy-to-use experience. TiVo subscribers can search using the way they intuitively think about television; that is, by starting with a program they currently enjoy and using elements of that program to find more of what they like. Universal Swivel search allows viewers to seamlessly link from descriptions of one program to all others that have common elements, including program name, actors, or suggestions based on other viewers' feedback.

• TiVoCast – TiVoCast delivers original video programming directly to your TiVo box over your broadband Internet connection from a variety of media brands and producers, including the New York Times, CNET, iVillage, The Onion, and many others. The content appears in your Now Playing List, alongside regular broadcast programming as well as your Amazon Unbox rentals and purchases and even Home Movies. It's all seamlessly integrated into the entire TiVo experience.

• Home Movie Sharing – Instead of burning your home movies to DVD and mailing them to friends and family, now you can share them through a private TiVo channel of your own. Simply upload your video footage or photographs to One True Media (www.OneTrueMedia.com), get a channel code, and send the code out to your audience. Your home videos will show up right in the Now Playing list on their TiVo boxes, so they can enjoy them on their own TV. No need to huddle around a computer screen anymore, home movie sharing delivers those precious moments directly to the TV.

• Online Services -With your TiVo box connected to your broadband home network, you can access a variety of online services right on your TV, including Yahoo! Traffic and Weather, Fandango movie tickets, live radio, podcasts, games and more.

• TiVo KidZone – Only TiVo-branded DVRs give you total control over what your kids see on TV. With TiVo KidZone, you get to choose which shows your children can watch and record. It also helps you discover great new shows for them through recommendations from leading national children's organizations. TiVo KidZone provides a customized Now Playing List for your children that displays only the shows you pre-approve, keeping their shows separate from your own shows. TiVo KidZone relies on your own personal settings and password to ensure your kids only see what you want them to see, keeping TV as safe as possible.

Pre-orders begin today with the first boxes being shipped in early August. See www.tivo.com for details on ship dates. A subscription to the TiVo service is required and sold separately. TiVo HD will be available starting early August at Best Buy, Circuit City and other retailers for $299.99.

About TiVo Inc.
Founded in 1997, TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO) pioneered a brand new category of products with the development of the first commercially available digital video recorder (DVR). Sold through leading consumer electronic retailers, TiVo has developed a brand which resonates boldly with consumers as providing a superior television experience. Through agreements with leading satellite and cable providers, TiVo also integrates its full set of DVR service features into the set-top boxes of mass distributors. TiVo’s DVR functionality and ease of use, with such features as Season Passâ„¢ recordings and WishList® searches and KidZone have elevated its popularity among consumers and have created a whole new way for viewers to watch television. With a continued investment in its patented technologies, TiVo is revolutionizing the way consumers watch and access home entertainment. Rapidly becoming the focal point of the digital living room, TiVo’s DVR is at the center of experiencing new forms of content on the TV, such as broadband delivered video, music and photos. With innovative features, such as TiVoToGoâ„¢ and online scheduling, TiVo is expanding the notion of consumers experiencing “TiVo, TV your way.®” The TiVo® service is also at the forefront of providing innovative marketing solutions for the television industry, including a unique platform for advertisers and audience measurement research. The Company is based in Alviso, California.

TiVo, Season Pass, Swivel, TiVoToGo, WishList, the slogan ‘TiVo, TV your way.’, Series2, Series3, and the TiVo logo are trademarks of TiVo Inc. or its subsidiaries worldwide. © 2007 All rights reserved.

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