Taking its cue from companies giving away free PCs in return for detailed demographic data on customers, Vancouver, British Columbia-based Planetville and partner Cinax began giving away free TV tuner boards and MPEG software yesterday at the Digital Coast conference. By early next year, Cinax plans to offer software that allows users to pause live TV on their computers, just as TiVo and Replay TV do now with their devices. Cinax's WinVCR software allows users to compress cable or broadcast streams to fit a two-hour feature on their hard drives. The free boards and MPEG software are available at the Planetville site.
Viewers are able to play along with the contestants in real time, accumulating points as they go.
The service will be formally rolled out to Web TV Plus users on 4 October. It will also debut on the Game Show Network in the winter. At a demo session, TiVo chief executive Michael Ramsey announced that Best Buy will begin selling its digital TV recording device nationwide on Friday. At the same time, TiVo announced that its technology will be incorporated in future Sony digital recorders. Sony will also develop programming for the TiVo platform and took a minority stake in the company.