TiVo users are certainly in for a great time this holiday season, with TiVo announcing a slew of new features in addition to an eSATA storage device that was developed specifically for Series 3 and TiVo HD boxes. One of the more interesting releases include the TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (MRV) that enables viewers to watch their recorded TiVo shows across separate TiVo devices without being in the same room. In order to illustrate this situation, imagine recording an episode of Golden Girls in your living room, and then watching it on the TiVo in your bedroom just before you nod off in bed. I strongly suspect that hardcore TiVo fans will find this to be one of the best ways to record all their favorite shows, even when you might have to struggle with three or even four shows simultaneously (recording a couple per DVR in this case). MRV support will work with Series 2, Series 3, and TiVo HD boxes, although do be aware that recordings must be sent from a Series 3/HD box to the Series 2, and not otherwise. As for the Series 2, it won’t be able to handle HD content.

In addition, both the Series 3 and HD boxes will feature support for TiVoToGo, enabling any downloaded content to be sent across your network to a notebook or desktop computer to be viewed using Desktop Plus or having the option to burn it to a DVD. Mac users will have to ditch TiVo’s Desktop software, picking up Roxio Toast 8 or Popcorn 3 for this purpose instead.

How will these new features affect your TV viewing life? Do you find that you have way too many recorded shows to catch up with, and lack the time to do so? I personally think that once you are a couple of episodes behind, chances are pretty slim you’ll have enough time to go through those while keeping up the pace unless you’re laid off or take a really long vacation. Still, I suppose the appeal of knowing you can do all that was mentioned in the previous two paragraphs could lead you to part with your hard earned cash.

Source: Ars Technica