Matt Haughey at PVRBlog ran across some info about the new R15 DIRECTV Plus DVR, as posted at TV Predictions. There’s only one very blurry black-and-white screenshot, and the details are sketchy. Highlights: The new service will cost $5.99 a month (hardware is extra) and will have a 90-minute live buffer. It will also allow you to “bookmark” a program, which is a nifty idea. There are also some vague details of an on-demand pay-per-view service that sounds a little kludgey. The hardware is supposedly due in October.

With any new DVR, of course, the devil is in the details. And given that this material is from a bootleg copy of a product manual, it’s difficult to characterize the experience of using the actual product. Meanwhile, DirecTiVo users can rest easier knowing that they’ll be supported for a long time to come.

Update: In the comments, Brian Hoyt points out that the R15 is SD only, and the long-awaited HD version is still under wraps. I’ve changed the headline accordingly.

Lost Remote passes along details from a study reporting that satellite TV now reaches 27 percent of households. That’s up from 19 percent just a year ago, according to J. D. Power & Associates. Some of the growth came from people like me, who switched from cable. But most, according to Steve Kirkeby, senior director of telecommunication research at J. D. Power, represents new subscribers: “It is satellite that is picking up new subscribers, folks who’ve never had pay TV before. Their growth isn’t necessarily coming from cable.”

You know the rules: Shuffle your entire music collection, click Play, and report the first 20 tracks, no matter what [*]. This week’s list is formatted as song title, artist, and album (in italics):

1. Riding with the King, B.B. King and Eric Clapton, Riding with the King
2. Night Is Left Behind, Yonder Mountain String Band, Live in Cincinnati 10-31-2004
3. Rattlesnake Shake, Fleetwood Mac[**], Live at the BBC
4. Forgotten Years, Midnight Oil, Blue Sky Mining
5. Love O’Love, The Subdudes, Primitive Streak
6. Mother, Sinead O’Connor and Roger Waters, The Wall: Live in Berlin 1990
7. A’ Chuthag (The Cuckoo), Natalie MacMaster, My Roots Are Showing
8. Silvio, Bob Dylan, White Dove (bootleg)
9. What Is This Thing Called Love?, Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time Vol. 2
10. Back in the High Life, Warren Zevon, Live in Nashville 4-11-2000 (bootleg)
11. Fly Like An Eagle, The Neville Brothers, Family Groove
12. Alive, Pearl Jam, Ten
13. Mother Pigogne and the Clowns, Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker
14. Lady Cab Driver, Prince, 1999
15. Concrete Jungle, Bob Marley and the Wailers, On Stage
16. Why Walk When You Can Fly, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Stones in the Road
17. The Big Room, Neil Young, Archives Be Damned Vol. 4 (bootleg)
18. Casey Jones, David Lindley and Warren Zevon, Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead
19. Seguro Que Hell Yes, Flaco Jimenez, Flaco Jimenez
20. Five Women, Joe Cocker, Night Calls

[*] My one exception is to limit each artist to one track per list. If the same artist appears a second time, I skip over that track. This week, Bob Dylan and Yonder Mountain String Band and Bob Marley would each have had an extra track on the list otherwise.

[**] The original Peter Green lineup, not the bogus Nicks-Buckingham gang.

PVR Wire has the latest installment in the DirecTV/TiVo feud:

It’s not really news, but it does make it official: DirecTV will stop marketing TiVo’s PVRs later this year, replacing them with NDS Group Plc technology, which is owned by DirecTV investor News Corp.

The word came Wednesday during Reuters Telecommunications, Cable and Satellite Summit in New York City. "The product we will market is our product," DirecTV Chief Executive Chase Carey said. However, he suggested that customers can still get TiVo if they ask.

The NDS PVRs have high-capacity hard drives that store frequently watched programs, creating an almost video-on-demand experience for users.

The NDS box will reportedly be able to handle MPEG4 format streams, which means more hi-def with less hard drive storage. It’ll be interesting to see whether DirecTV offers incentives to current TiVo owners to get them to upgrade.

And a prediction: It’ll be 2007 before the HD versions of these new boxes are available outside of a few test markets.

Oh dear. And here I thought that Apple was the company that innovated and Microsoft was the one that “borrowed” ideas from everyone else. Imagine how disappointed I was to learn that the coolest feature of the iPod, its “clickwheel,” has actually been rejected for a patent because of this patent issued in 1997 and this one from 1995.

Shocking, I tell you.

(via seattlepi.com)

You know the rules: Shuffle your entire music collection, click Play, and report the first 20 tracks, no matter what [*]. This week’s list is formatted as song title, artist, and album (in italics):

1. Tato Wa Biso, Ray Lema, Gaia
2. La Hormiguita, Juan Luis Guerra, Ni Es Lo Mismo, Ni Es Igual
3. Only Love, k.d. lang, Invincible Summer
4. Preacher in the Ring, Pt. 1, Bruce Hornsby, Spirit Trail
5. Stuck Inside of Mobile (with the Memphis Blues Again), Grateful Dead, Nightfall of Diamonds
6. Everything Happens to Me, Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time, Vol. 3
7. Soon Come, Peter Tosh, Bush Doctor
8. Compliment, Collective Soul, Dosage
9. Can’t Even Be Bothered, The Charlatans UK, Between 10th and 11th
10. Bass Trap, U2, Best of 1980-1990/B-Sides
11. Listen to Her Heart, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits
12. Compay Gato, Los Super Seven, Canto
13. Mojo Haiku, Little Feat, Shake Me Up
14. Triad, The Byrds, The Byrds (Box Set)
15. Winter, The Rolling Stones, Goats Head Soup
16. 3×5, John Mayer, Any Given Thursday
17. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Bob Dylan, Live in Brussels 12-Nov-2003 (bootleg)
18. Your Love, Neil Young, Archives Be Damned Vol. 2 (bootleg)
19. Whirl-Y-Reel 1, Afro Celt Sound System, Volume 1: Sound Magic
20. Discipline, Joe Jackson, Blaze of Glory

[*] My one exception is to limit each artist to one track per list. If the same artist appears a second time, I skip over that track. This week, Bob Dylan and Wynton Marsalis would each have had an extra track on the list otherwise.

When a company that makes hard drives commissions a survey that promotes “the terabyte lifestyle,” my BS detector pins at 11. Still, I just added up the cumulative storage in my office and it’s well over a terabyte. It’s over 2 TB if you include the living room.

But when it comes to storage, I am so not typical.

(via Digital Media Thoughts)

You know the rules: Shuffle your entire music collection, click Play, and report the first 20 tracks, no matter what [*]. This week’s list is formatted as song title, artist, and album (in italics):

1. 8 Cylinders, Yonder Mountain String Band, Live at Newport Music Hall 2-21-2004
2. The Boy in the Bubble, Paul Simon, Graceland
3. Love Song for No One, John Mayer, Any Given Thursday
4. Shangri-La, Don Henley, The End of the Innocence
5. Tension, Shadow, Heat in Da Place: Soca from Trinidad
6. Don’t You Feel My Leg, Maria Muldaur, Louisiana Love Call
7. Mama, ‘Tain’t Long fo’ Day, Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men, Public Domain: Songs from the Wild Land
8. Trompe Le Monde, The Pixies, Trompe Le Monde
9. Love for Sale, Ella Fitzgerald, The Complete Ella in Berlin
10. I Will Never Be the Same, Melissa Etheridge, Yes I Can
11. Boul Di Tagale, Cheikh Lo, Ne La Thiass
12. Desert Players, Ornette Coleman, Virgin Beauty
13. Fortress Around Your Heart, Sting, Songs of Love
14. Dry My Tears and Move On, The Del McCoury Band, It’s Just the Night
15. The Promised Land, Grateful Dead, Live at Universal Amphitheatre June 30, 1973
16. It’s Only a Paper Moon, Nat “King” Cole, The Unforgettable Nat King Cole
17. Autumn Almanac, The Kinks, Ultimate Collection
18. Eight Miles High, The Byrds, The Byrds (Box Set) Disk 1
19. Murder Incorporated, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Live in NYC
20. Mad, Lou Reed, Ecstasy