I got a new television!

Saturday night I stayed up till about 4am playing with my Pocket PC phone. Now I can watch TV shows on it when I'm on the go. Sweeeeet!

Key tools:

PocketDivXEncoder

BetaPlayer (down at the moment - here's a download link to a mirrored file)

I'll leave the problem of actually getting your TV into digital file format up to you.

While not necessarily legal, the Internet is full of interesting howtos on downloading TV and tools to make the process even easier. I pay ninety dollars and nine cents every month for cable television, and certainly don't advocate stealing anything, but I sure hope the entertainment and technology industries provide a legal means of downloading TV soon, or it'll become the story of the mp3 all over again.

TiVoToGo and Media Center are a good start. But they still don't solve the problem of recording many shows at once, or catching that episode of 60 Minutes when the NCAA game before it goes into double overtime.

As the industry goes to Supreme Court tomorrow morning, I'll leave you with this memorable quote courtesy of News.com:

In 1982, testifying in front of Congress before the Supreme Court had ruled, MPAA President Jack Valenti said, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

Right.