At least that's the somewhat sarcastic conclusion I'm jumping to. As I started watching the east coast feed, an email bounced into the TV Squad inbox from reader 'Jay.' He noted that when he tried to record The Middleman on his PC, he was greeted with an error message. I had to wait three hours for the regular airing on the left coast, but I dusted off an old Media Center PC and got that very same error, as you see in the picture. I like to think that Wendy is showing her shock and outrage at the snafu in that shot. But wait, there's more ... after the jump.

• The ZvBox remote controls your computer, so whatever your PC is doing is what shows up on the TV
• The other side of that coin is that you can't use your PC to do something else while someone is watching ZvBox content
• There's a good look at the web video interface, with content from Hulu, Jaman, YouTube, ABC News, and other sites

• Picture and sound quality is pretty decent on all three boxes, but the Xbox 360 does the best job of showing photos
• The Linksys extender boots up way faster than the others
• The Linksys extender is the cheapest, but all three devices cost between $240 and $300
• The Xbox 360 has the noisiest fan and overall operation
• The D-Link and Linksys extenders support several video codecs that the Xbox 360 does not.
• The Xbox 360 plays games, the other extenders don't (unless you count games designed for Windows Media Center)

It's one of the eternal questions in life: what do you call your remote?

Tim Dowling over at The Guardian has a story about all of the different names that TV viewers have for that little device that saves us from having to walk across the room and has probably contributed to the onslaught of ADD we have. All of the names we've all heard are on the list, such as "clicker" (my mom used to call it that), "flipper" (which was popular with Frank on Everybody Loves Raymond), "wand," and "changer." Of course, The Guardian is a British paper so you're going to get some words that Americans really aren't familiar with, such as "tellychanger," "podger," and "hoofer-doofer." Most people I know just call it "the remote." We should come up with a different name for it. "Binky" is good, but that's already taken for pacifiers. How about "the glooptron?"

I call mine "Jessica."

[via TV Tattle]

With our ever expanding channel lineups it is getting harder and harder for a new show, especially one tucked away on cable with no big name stars attached, to get noticed. Seeing a network release a show online before the premiere isn't new, but seeing one release a pilot on P2P networks with no DRM is a bit more original. And that is just what the folks over at Spike have done with their new show, Factory.

The network has made the show available on its website, at downloadable video stores like iTunes, and in working with the Jun group, on P2P networks. Although my first reaction at the mention of Limewire was surprise that people are still using Limewire, I do agree with their thinking behind the move. Todd Ames, marketing VP at Spike, said they went with the P2P as an acknowledgment of "what people are really doing, and the way consumers are really looking for content." He also notes that there are no plans to make any additional episodes available that way, but it's a step in the right direction that they are paying attention to the viewers.