Quietly and over the objections of the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Football League, the F.C.C. has approved "TiVoToGo," a new service that all us TiVo users will soon be putting to good use. Here's the TiVo press release but I can summarize it for you: "TiVoToGo" is a way to interface your TiVo and your computer so that you can record a show on the TiVo and then transfer it to your computer's hard disk. The "To Go" part of the name comes from the assumption that the main usage of this service will be when you move a show to your laptop and then take your laptop on vacation or to your place of work…and you watch the show there. If your computer has a DVD burner, you might also transfer the show to a DVD.
There's some sort of security key feature that's supposed to limit your ability to transfer the shows over the Internet but it sounds very easy to defeat. For that matter, it's pretty simple to just record a TV show to your harddisk without a TiVo and send it to as many people as you wish. Someone is going to have to face reality here. We will soon see websites where if you miss last night's Letterman or yesterday's General Hospital, you'll be able to log in and download it. I'm guessing the networks are already quietly preparing to open their own web services for this purpose. Just another way broadcast television will be changing.