Yes, the Australian television networks are bastards. Yes, the Australian TiVo HD is a work in progress. Regardless, TiVo still has a lot to offer.

The new Australian TiVo has taken a hammering in the media this week, mostly from those annoyed that the PVR's media player features won't be available until a firmware update next year. The fact you'll have to pay for the update just rubs salt into the wound.

I agree that waiting for extra features is frustrating but I wouldn't declare the TiVo hobbled. As a Personal Video Recorder, which is its primary purpose, Australia's TiVo will be very impressive straight out of the box. In my first look over at ITWire, Hands on with Seven's Australian TiVo, I seem to be one of the few journalists who think its strengths outweigh its weaknesses.

The Australian TiVo offers the four vital features that almost every other PVR on the Australian market lacks - a proper Electronic Program Guide, a "Season Pass" feature, intelligent storage management and a generous margin for error when it comes to scheduling recordings. In my experience, a PVR lacking any of these features is a waste of time and money.

Yes the TiVo's 160GB hard drive is too small, but TiVo somewhat compensates for this with intelligent storage management which automatically deletes old recordings according to your preferences. It also features excellent padding management, to reduce unnecessary recording time while still ensuring you see the end of every show.

"As for ad skipping, that is one of the major advantages of a PVR, without it you might as well stick to VHS!" wrote one reader over at ITWire.

That's crazy talk. Show me a VCR that lets you record two high-def channels at once, record more than a few hours without changing tapes, offers time shifting, can be programmed via the web and can access an EPG and then provide custom padding for recordings.

Yes the lack of ad-skipping is annoying and just reinforces the fact that Australians get screwed by the local networks. Seven are bastards. I never said they weren't. Still, ad-skipping is a luxury and I'm prepared to overlook it in a PVR that has so much else going for it.

Yes the commercial networks are bastards. Yes, they don't stick to their own schedules. Yes Nine are bastards for screwing IceTV and it's the network's fault that Australians have restricted access to EPG data. Not every article can start with the phrase "Seven and Nine are bastards", even if it is true. Yes the networks created the situation that gives TiVo an EPG advantage, but that doesn't change the fact that the TiVo is actually a very good PVR.

It seems to me that much of the criticism is coming from fanboys of other PVRs, plus Seven and Nine-haters, who are venting their spleens. Some media centre owners believe the world is conspiring against them, but they have to accept the fact that media centres aren't for everyone.

You may love your PVR and IceTV, and hate the networks, but you have to face the fact that the TiVo is the best PVR in Australia for non-technical users. Just because you wouldn't buy one doesn't mean it's junk. Just because I can see its merits doesn't make me a TiVo fanboy.

Yes, the networks are bastards, but don't hate me because I like TiVo.

The 800 pound PVR gorilla that's been silently lurking in the corner is set to launch next Tuesday in Sydney. I'll be at the launch, but here's what it will take for an Australian TiVo to find a permanent place in my digital lounge room.

Firstly, a "We Were Wrong". While Foxtel will brag about its new high-def Personal Video Recorder to anyone who will listen, the silence from the TiVo camp has been amazing. I expected a marketing Blitzkrieg from TiVo's Australian backers this year, competing for "consumer mindshare" against the likes of Foxtel and the new Topfield high-def box in the lead up to the Olympics. Instead there was a backend restructure after which TiVo declared a media blackout. As a result it almost completely dropped off the radar and I admit I missed the mark in April when I speculated that the Australian TiVo might be dead and buried.

It looks like the Australian TiVo will sell for $AU700 without a monthly subscription fee, which is a little pricey but still not too bad compared to the competition. Apart from the basics like twin HD tuners, HDMI, chasing playback and a big hard drive, here's what I'd like to see for the money. I know most of these features are in the US TiVo, but that doesn't mean we'll necessarily see them in Australia (for example, ad-skipping will probably be disabled on Australian TiVos).

1. Generous recording margin for error

A PVR without this is useless in Australia because the television networks aren't known for starting and finishing shows on time. If you really want to catch *all* of a movie or late night drama, you need to be able to set recordings to start at least 10 minutes early and run at least 30 minutes late. Microsoft's MCE interface sucks in this department, because it's not designed for Australian conditions. This feature also requires intelligent overlap management, especially with the new trend by networks of cutting ads and even credits between shows.

2. Intelligent storage management

The problem with almost every PVR is that when the hard drive fills up it just stops recording, and you don't realise until you've already missed your favourite show. Like Microsoft's MCE software, I want my TiVo to automatically delete old recordings (according to my set preferences) so there's always room for new shows. I'd also like it to email me if there's a problem, but that could be asking too much.

3. Season pass

This is a fancy way of saying "I want it to record every episode of Star Trek, regardless of which channel it's on and when it starts. A feature like this is essential in Australia because the networks love to shuffle their schedules at the last moment and it's easy to miss a show (which has driven many viewers into the arms of BitTorrent). While we're at it, the networks need to pull their collective fingers out and provide decent EPG data. The current so-called seven day guide is still very hit and miss. Unless it improves, TiVo will suck.

Okay, those three are my core demands and, for the sake of family harmony, I've sworn to never again tolerate a PVR that doesn't offer them. Here are my non-core demands that would be the icing on the cake;

4. Online remote scheduling

The ability to program my IceTV-enabled PVR from afar using the website or a desktop widget is fantastic. It's saved my bacon more than once and I'd be reluctant to give it up.

5. Channel surfing restrictions whilst time shifting

If you've resumed a movie after a five minute pause to make a coffee, it's easy to forget that you're time shifting rather than watching live TV. If you change channel during an ad break, the 10 minutes in the buffer is often lost and you're thrown forward to the present with no way of getting that 10 minutes back. My dream PVR would pop up a warning if I tried to change channel whilst time shifting.

6. Ad-skipping

It's a nice luxury but it's not essential - I'd forgive its omission in a PVR that got a tick in every other box. It looks like Australian TiVos will have ad-skipping disabled, which is annoying but not a deal-breaker.

That's my list of demands. What do you consider to be the essential features in a PVR?

UPDATE: I've had my first look at the Australian TiVo, and I'm very impressed.

EzyDownload will share revenues with ISPs, in return of unmetered downloads, in order to take on the might of Telstra's BigPond Movies.

EzyDVD, one of Australia's largest online DVD stores, has confirmed it will launch the EzyDownload movie download service in September. Along with the website, EzyDVD has 68 shop fronts across Australia - giving it a nice mix of clicks and mortar. EzyDownload was born from the ashes of movie download service ReelTime, acquired by EzyDVD for a song, and will be run by former ReelTime chief executive Andrew Wilshire.

Along with content deals, the biggest challenge facing competitors to BigPond Movies is bandwidth. BigPond's 200MB and 400MB monthly plans have created a situation where many homes lack the download speeds or monthly download allowance to do any of the things that make high speed internet access worth having. Many other ISPs introduced similar deals in a race to the bottom with BigPond. This of course means the vast majority of Australians don't have the bandwidth to download movies. The situation is slowly improving, there are now around 2.5 million Australian households with 1.5+ megabit connections, but there's still a long way to go.

So how do BigPond customers on 200MB per month plans download a 1.5GB movie from BigPond Movies? Easy, BigPond doesn't count downloads from BigPond Movies towards the download limits of BigPond customers. With its minuscule download limits BigPond has created an artificial walled garden - you don't need fences when you cut people off at the knees so they can't go anywhere else. What chance do other music and movie download services have?

Talking to EzyDownload's Wilshire, it's clear he sees unmetered content deals with other ISPs as a key weapon in the fight against BigPond Movies. EzyDownload is already in negotiations with other Australian ISPs to ensure bandwidth used downloading movies from EzyDownload is not counted towards the end user's monthly limit.

Unmetered content gives BigPond a "very significant" advantage as both an ISP and a movie download service, Wilshire says.

"That's why the ISPs we've spoken to about partnering are pretty enthusiastic," he says. "These "no cap" kinds of partnership with EzyDownloads make a huge amount of sense to the ISPs. I think it would be fair to say that EzyDownload would provide a generous revenue-share with the ISPs that it partners with."

Only time will tell if EzyDownload will be a phoenix to rise from the ashes of ReelTime, or whether it will be yet another dot.com-esque exercise in burning cash.

PhotoTV HD mode brings out the detail in your holiday snapshots when displayed on a big Bravia LCD television.

If you've ever tried to run a photo slideshow on your television, you know that it usually looks pretty crappy. Sony was showing off PhotoTV HD mode to Australian journalists this week and it looked rather impressive, although I suspect the LG Scarlet it was pitted against would have made anything look good.

The Bravias feature USB ports, so it's easy to drag your photos onto a USB stick and view them on the television. PhotoTV HD processing is also applied to photos played on attached devices, as long as they're connected via HDMI. Sony also wants to turn its Bravias into the mother of all photo frames, with Picture Frame mode letting you display the one image from a USB device for up to four hours - as if monster televisions weren't already sucking enough juice. If your happy snaps aren't worthy of such treatment, there's also a handful of pre-installed images such as Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Cypresses.

Suburbanites never embrace new technologies as fast as technophiles think they will, but I think Mums n Dads are ready for PhotoTV HD mode. Even if they haven't embraced the digital photography revolution, chances are someone in the family has - such as new parents. When they bring over photos of bub on a CD or USB stick, it's not much of a leap to think "hey, these would look great on the big TV".

The downside of the digital photography revolution is that our photos remain hidden away on hard drives. Technologies such as PhotoTV HD will start to revive the idea of the slide night and actually bring families together around the television rather than have people scattered around the house on their own computers.

I contemplated voting myself off the island after the Series 4 finale of Lost.

Thanks to a pocket of negatively charged exotic matter located behind my television, I managed to bend time and space to watch the Lost's series finale a few days before it screened locally. With time to mull it over, I've reconciled myself to the fact I'll probably never learn the truth behind the black fog monster.

Plenty of my friends have given up on Lost, and I can understand why. Every week it promises to deliver answers but instead just bombards us with more questions. It's like The X Files all over again. Just like good sex, half the enjoyment of good television is the anticipation. People enjoy being strung along, as long as there is a payoff at the end. The X Files left viewers frustrated so many times that they eventually went off to find satisfaction elsewhere. I'd say Lost has fallen into the same trap.

With its mixture of flash forwards and flash backs, Lost is quite possibly the most complicated story arc ever attempted in the history of television. Obviously this means you'll lose a few viewers along the way, but I think the writers need to "put out" a little more to avoid viewer frustration. There's little point is writing the world's greatest script if there's no-one left watching by the end. According to the local TV guide, Lost doesn't even rate in the top 20 most watched shows any more.

I think one of the reasons why I have more patience with Lost than The X Files is because I'm no longer at the mercy of the commercial television networks. I watch Lost when it suits me, without ads, and I can pause and rewind at any time to discuss plot twists with others in the room. I don't think I'm alone here, as Lost is always one of the most downloaded television shows on major BitTorrent search engine isoHunt. I doubt efforts to sync up broadcast times around the world is having much impact on this. People don't download Lost because they can't wait for it to be broadcast locally, they download Lost because they can't stand watching it on commercial television.

That poses a big question for the producers of quality drama - is commercial television compatible with complex story-telling? I'd say the answer is no. Lost's falling television audience yet massive online fan base supports this argument (take a look at lostpedia.com). Commercial television is so painful to watch that it's only suited to bite-sized adver-tainment with with little plot or substance.

So how will quality drama survive? The answer has to be subscription services, either through pay television or online services such as Apple's iTunes Store. The internet offers the ultimate in flexible viewing. When the price is right, the bandwidth is available and the technology is easy to use (think Apple TV), people will flock to a legitimate television download services.

In a race to the bottom to win back the YouTube generation, free-to-air commercial television is cutting its own throat. When more people can legitimately download shows like Lost and easily watch them on their television, the producers of quality drama will be able to bypass the networks and tell complex stories without interruption. The internet may have killed the television star, but it's also going to save it.