"Of all the amazing and wonderful things I saw this weekend at London's OpenTech conference, none came close to the stupendous Promise TV box. This is a home-built personal video recorder made out of commodity PC components (primarily a LOT of high-capacity hard-drives). What the Promise does is grab the entire broadcast TV multiplex -- all the channels being broadcast in the UK -- slices them up according to the free, over-the-air electronic programming guide, and stores an entire month's worth. Why program a TiVo to get certain shows for you when you can record every single show on the air, all at once, and then use recommendations, search, a grid, or any other means you care to name to figure out which of those thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of programming you want to watch."So apparently they have created a breadboard prototype and a single, product-like box that looks like the kind of thing you might stick under your TV. Very interesting concept.