Development continues on the new version of the open-source Galleon application for TiVo. The software already let you listen to your iTunes collection on your TiVo, view local weather forecasts, read RSS feeds, and do a ton of other cool things. Now version 2.5.0 is out with a bunch of updates:

• Display photos from iPhoto
• Increased album art size for HD displays
• Added scalable backgrounds for HD
  
• Fixed lyrics downloading program
• Upgraded movie rentals application
• Added a screen saver to display cover art and track title for music player
• Bug fixes and HD optimizations

There are a few known issues, including a couple of items that still display a bit funny on HDTV screens, but we're just impressed at how quickly the updates keep coming. This is free and open source software and as far as we can tell, there's pretty much just one guy in charge of development.

[via TiVo Blog]

Sure, you may have an Xbox 360 and/or Playstation3 sitting next to your TiVo. But wouldn't it be nice to play some video games with your TiVo remote without having to turn on your game console?

Yeah, maybe if you're into console games you're not the target market for PlayTeeVee's new service. But we'll still give the company some credit for finding an innovative way to bring online video gaming to your TV.

PlayTeeVee works with any broadband-connected Series2 TiVo. You add the PlayTeeVee IP address to your TiVo in order to play one of four games, including a soccer game, puzzle game, action game, and a pool simulator.

PlayTeeVee is free, and according to the frequently asked questions section in the user forums, the developers all "have day jobs," so it's not clear if and how they expect to make money off of the service. It'd be nice to see TiVo buy the rights to a few games or even hire a developer to work full time on developing games for the platform. But again, TiVo is hardly a serious video gaming machine, so maybe PlayTeeVee is just a fun distraction and not the start of a new trend toward multi-purpose PVR/gaming devices.

[via TiVo Lovers]

More than a year after the developer of Galleon stopped working on the open source application for doing about 1,001 things with your TiVo, a new developer has picked up the project.

Galleon lets you:

• Play MP3 files using Winamp skins, view album arts, lyrics, and other images for your music collection
• Listen to your iTunes collection
• View local weather forecasts
• Read RSS feeds
• Listen to internet radio including Shoutcast stations
• View your photos with background music and slideshow effects

And the list goes on. But with development ceasing last year, there was no support for high definition applications, making Galleon a bit less impressive on Series3 TiVo units.

Two updates were released this week. Galleon 2.3.1 doesn't include much in the way of new features, but 2.4.0 alpha is the first version to support high definition applications, like HD photos. This is an alpha, so expect some bugs, but it's nice to see someone pick up the Galleon torch.

Sure, TiVo lets you share home movies with your friends and even to download movies from Amazon Unbox. But what if you want to really push your TiVo to the limits? Like Doug Swallow, (who developed an application that you actually purchase Unbox movies from your couch) many users have written programs to add functionality to Series2 and Series3 TiVo's.

TiVo Blog has gone and posted a pretty decent roundup of these applications, including applications that:

• Let you view your NetFlix queue
• Show you live traffic cam data
• Stream media from your PC to your TV
  
• View Flickr photos
• Rent movies from Blockbuster Online
• Read RSS feeds

The list will be regularly updated, so it might be worth bookmarking.