ipod

• Two (2) 80GB iPod Classics.
  
• Five (5) swag bags containing TAVA Canvas tote bag, TAVA t-shirt and TAVA pen.
• Seven (7) sample packs of TAVA.

• Optional plug-in that automatically transcodes recordings to H.264 and syncs them with your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV using an iTunes RSS feed
• New drive pooling feature lets you make use of multiple hard drives by recording to whichever drive has free space
• Use any web-connected portable device (iPhone, PDA, laptop) as a remote control
• Automatically record top picks from other Beyond TV users
• Optional plug-in for burning DVDs from PCs running Beyond TV Link software.

• Play H.264 videos
• Extend recording time while a job is currently being recorded by hitting the record button and adding the amount of time
• Recover recordings that were interrupted due to power outage or reboot
• Beyond TV Link can now stream live TV for multiple days without stopping, so you never have to stop watching TV. Ever.

• A new plugin allows you to automatically convert recordings to H.264 for viewing on an iPod or other portable device (earlier versions of BeyondTV featured automatic conversion to DivX or WMV only).
• You can generated an RSS feed that allows you to automatically import those files to iTunes.
• A new "drive pooling" feature lets you treat multiple hard drives as one recording source, effectively increasing your potential storage space.
• Use your internet connected PDA or mobile phone as a remote control with the new Firefly Nano/Remote Library feature.
• Automatically record the top shows based on BeyondTV Buzz community feedback.
• Burn DVDs using a BeyondTV Link machine.
• There's a new calendar view for upcoming recordings using the web interface.

Do you spend a lot of time in the bathroom? Roto-Rooter is holding a contest, and the winner gets the deluxe, luxury toilet in the picture on the right.

The toilet - which the company is calling a "bathroom oasis" - comes complete with an Avanti Compact Refrigerator with a beer tap, an iPod, an iCarta iPod dock with tissue holder, a Baseline pedal exerciser, a dual-sided magnification mirror, a megaphone (to call your family members for more toilet paper, I guess), a personal cooling fan, a USB powered coffee mug and warmer, an Xbox 360, a TiVo, a Gateway laptop computer, a Philips 20" LCD Flat Panel TV and a Philips DVD player.

Wow, the winner of this probably won't ever have to leave the house again. The contest ends April 2, and the winner will be announced on April 25 (National Plumber's Day).

[via Boing Boing]

• Grey's Anatomy's Isaiah Washington joins Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, and everyone else in apologizing and asking for "help."
• Katie Couric is going to the Super Bowl.
• Oprah Winfrey is worth a gazillion dollars.
• AppleTV is selling faster than iPods??
• Like Joel, Aaron Barnhart is filing reports from the TCA.
• Over at Adjab, I talk about the product placement on last night's episode of The Office.
• Ryan Seacrest doesn't like Angelina Jolie, but Brad is fantastic.
• Is Ana Marie Cox going to host a new Sunday morning political talk show for HBO?

I'm serious. If you buy me this totally awesome R2-D2 with a DVD projector, iPod dock, MP3 player and a bunch of other awesome things, I will pay you back by doing chores around your home. I'll rake your carpet. I'll vacuum your lawn. I'll wash your kids and take your truck to the zoo. I'm not sure how much it costs, but can you really put a price on my happiness? Yes, you can: it's however much this R2-D2 thing costs. And it even comes with a Millennium Falcon remote.

"But, Adam," some of you might be saying, "I never agree with anything you write, why should I buy you this gadget?"

If that's the case, record yourself on a DVD complaining to me. Then send the DVD along with the R2-D2 DVD player thingy. I promise I will watch the DVD and respond to you*. Besides, when I watch the free DVDs studios occasionally send to me I need something better to watch them with than my regular old TV. Let's all work together to make this happen.

[via Boing Boing]

*"Watching the DVD" can mean looking at the disc without ever actually putting it in a DVD player.

(Part 3 of 5) In our review of the top television stories of 2005 former TV Squad scribe Ryan J. Budke said this about TV on the Internet, "If you think that 2005 was big, wait 'til 2006 -- you ain't seen nothing yet." Boy howdy, was he correct! If 2005 was the year that TV came to the Internet, then 2006 was the year that it bought a home, settled in, and joined the local PTA. From pilots and first-run episodes to classic and canceled shows, television and the World Wide Web took one step closer to being officially married in 2006. And, we have one site on the Internet to thank for this explosion . . .

YouTube.

Okay, maybe YouTube isn't the only site we should be thanking. I mean, according to Ryan, the networks realized back in 2005 that this newfangled technology called the Internet wasn't going away any time soon, so they began to utilize it. However, it was the utterly huge popularity of YouTube that pushed the networks into getting their collective acts together to get their content onto the Web.

I don't know how long these episodes have been available, but I just happened to notice that the entire first season of Saturday Night Live is available for download on iTunes (actually, it looks like it was just added this week). You can purchase individual episodes for a buck ninety-nine, or get the whole shebang for $44.99. This first season is filled with classic moments that were unlike anything seen on television before, late night or otherwise, proving beyond any doubt that lots and lots of cocaine make people very funny. But I kid.

Of course, you can always buy the DVD set, also, which is probably the better option, but this first season is pretty damn funny no matter what screen you view it on, unless it's the new Sylvania Dead Puppy Television, a TV screen framed in dead puppies. This product is available through the Sylvania Web site, or it could possibly just be a dream I had the other night. I haven't bothered to check.

So I was poking around the ol' iTunes yesterday, and what do you know, they had just added shows from the Sundance Channel.

"Hey, ma!" I yelled, "we done got ourselves some Sundance programming on the iTunes!"

"Yee ha!" she screamed, tossing off her bonnet and almost knocking over her butter churner. As soon as Bessie Ellie Mary Ellen May gets back from the Maple Syrup and Baptism Festival we'll download ourselves some episodes!"

"If only pa were alive to see this," I sighed. "Why did he have to taunt that rabid goat with a stick?"

At any rate, you can now find a few Sundance shows on iTunes. The shows are all of the "reality" variety, including documentaries The Hill and One Punk Under God, and investigations into real-life dramas such as The Staircase and The First Amendment Project.