With on-demand television gaining momentum, JOHN HARRIS looks at how new devices and services such as FetchTV are shaping the future of home entertainment.

I learned last weekend that I’d lost control of the technology in my household.

With my nearly 11-year-old daughter away at her first scout camp, I had unprecedented access to the TV and TiVo, the Fred and Ginger of our home entertainment system.

For the flatfooted, TiVo is a high-definition hard drive recorder with dual TV tuners and an electronic program guide that updates itself automatically over the Internet.

As well as time-shifting TV shows from their regular timeslot to an on-demand location on its hard drive, TiVo can also download movies via a broadband connection.

TiVo even records shows automatically based on your viewing patterns, augmented by a green thumbs-up button used to vote for favourite shows.

During her absence, I discovered my daughter had worked out this preference-setting function because EVERY TiVo-suggested show was aimed at the discerning “tweenager”.

My wife later informed me that my little sweetheart treats TiVo Suggestions as a backup just in case she runs out of her regularly-recorded shows.

Welcome to the age of on-demand TV.

Built-in electronic program guides put devices such as TiVo head-and-shoulders above the humble video recorder which required the patience of Job and a librarian’s love of cataloguing to record more than an occasional show.

While TiVo was the only game in town for a while, it’s now getting a run for its money.

This week, LG Electronics launched a twin-tuner, high-definition recorder with a built-in Blu-ray disk player. Costing from $1099, this device comes with either a 500-gigabyte (GB) or 250GB hard drive.

As well as a USB port for plugging in external hard drives as large as one terabyte for extra storage, these LG devices have built-in wireless network support, so you can view online content such as YouTube on your TV.

While it’s possible to achieve the same outcome with a TiVo and a Playstation3, this single unit eliminates one more device from beneath the TV – and reduces the black spaghetti tangle.

On-demand TV offers more action this year with anticipation building about a planned service called FetchTV, which uses a TiVo-like set top box to let you pause and rewind live TV shows and including three TV tuners and a hard drive for recording more than 100 hours of standard definition TV.

FetchTV will be an Internet-delivered service that gives Foxtel a run for its money by offering subscription TV channels, pay-per-view movies as well as social networking applications and games.

The company reportedly has content delivery agreements with Discovery, National Geographic, MTV, Fox, E! Entertainment, BBC World News, CNBC, ABC, Roadshow, Disney, MGM and Lionsgate.

FetchTV is expected to launch in the middle of this year, costing $25-$30 a month for access to 20 TV channels and a library of pay-per-view content.

So stay tuned for developments.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. Email jharris@impress.com.au.

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