Digital Home Thoughts: TiVo Looks For An Edge

"Kyle Copeland has more than 90GB worth of digital music stored on various networked computers and Apple Computer iPods... Every time the 29-year-old Marlboro, Mass., engineer wanted to change a song playing from his iTunes library over his wireless network, he had to walk over to his computer. Sitting in front of his television one day, Copeland had a realization: "That's when I thought, 'Most places where there are speakers there's a television.'" So Copeland and fellow engineer John Brosnan created iSeeiTunes, a program that lets users control the songs played over a network via their TV. With more than 5,000 users since its March launch, iSeeiTunes has become a relative hit among the TiVo developer community, garnering high ratings in forums dedicated to TiVo applications."

The Linux-based software behind the TiVo service has always been major attraction for hackers, and while the company frowned on those efforts initially, it did little to stop them. However, TiVo is now encouraging developers to tinker in hopes of finding new features to add to its iconic DVR service and expand TiVo into an interface to control home networks. What are your favorite TiVo hacks?