I dropped my remote control last night (actually, one of four that I have on my coffee table for various electronics), and it got me thinking about the remote controls we had when I was a kid. We didn't have one, that is, at least not for the big Magnavox cabinet TV (a real piece of furniture), nor the Sony Trinitron after that (so futuristic because it had separate push buttons for each channel!).

Here's an RCA ad from 1961 for a remote. I'd rather have this than the confusing mess I have now. Love the opening special effects with the glittery star thing. And what the heck is that next to the TV, a hookah?

Personal video recorders are great at letting you record a library of shows and watch them on your own schedule. But for TV viewers who prefer to watch their programs according to their broadcast schedule, the most attractive features of a PVR might be the ability to pause and rewind "live" TV.

It looks like several manufacturers are working on a "Pause TV" reference design that would let you pause and rewind television shows without recording complete programs to a hard drive.

Pause TV would most likely use flash memory, although it could also be hard drive based. A TV tuner and flash memory would be integrated into a TV set, allowing you to hit pause, go get a snack, come back and keep watching. 4GB of flash memory would be enough to record about an hour of video at DVD quality.

But there are some technical limits. In order to work, your TV will have to record every program you watch to flash memory. And flash memory has limited write cycles. That's not generally a problem with the flash card in your digital camera, because it's only used periodically and not really expected to last ten years. But you don't want your flash memory dying before the rest of the TV set. Unless you really need an excuse to buy a new TV in a few years anyway.