Ever since I got my girlfriend Carrie hooked on TiVo, I wanted TiVo for myself as well. Tough luck for me because you can’t get it in Europe/Holland. And it’s not because of technical restrictions, it’s because of all the damn politics surrounding the cable companies here. They understand all too well that TiVo revolutionizes the TV market and they all want to make money from it. So instead we have all kinds of weird constructions to get TiVo like functions (mainly: every cable company has it’s own set-top box solution). To cut a long story short: one of the bigger Dutch telco’s (KPN) now is introducing Mine.TV. At first glance it seems like this is just TiVo but the big difference is that it actually is TV over ADSL instead of regular cable like TiVo. And that is something I don’t like to much. But the prospect of being able to get everything recorded etc. is rather kewl (especially for a N.A.D.D. afflicted person like me). Also it misses some cool features that TiVo also has like the season pass, wish list and the suggestion/personal taste adaption. But it is a start. So I just signed up to see if they want me to be a test subject for the service (it’s free until October but they want your feedback). Supposedly I will get a message (either e-mail of phone) from them before June 15th if they want me to be a guinnea pig. Let’s see what happens… One thing is for sure: if I need to switch from my current ADSL provider (Demon) to KPN, I will pass on the offer.
To be continued…