I have a decent amount of HD content available to me, but in order to view / record it i need to be using a cable co supplied box or cable card. I like to keep my setup as simple as possible to cut down on failure points. Running cable into the house, splitting it, running it into a cable box, then out via component, then into a capture card, then into my mac then our via DVI/HDMI to my receiver then into my TV offers a lot of opportunity for stuff to go wrong. I'm going to give the TiVo on Comcast hardware deal a try when it's released to the masses, hopefully that will fulfill most of my needs until either a new HD TiVo is released or an Apple product emerges.

HD is a different ball game, and consider yourself lucky as where I live (Canada), we have no federally mandated QAM or OTA HD, and broadcasters have gamed the flags to prevent non-proprietary DVRs from recording even basic cable.

Likewise, we have no federal mandate for firewire ports or cable cards. You buy the local cable companies box or you go without.

BTW- Have you tried the Firewire -> Mac direct capture? The files are huge but the quality is excellent.

Apple was "late to the game" on making a phone too and look what they've done there.

It's idea recycling the same way that there were mobiles before the iPhone...

I agree whole-heartedly that the aTV would be huge with these features, but if they won't let us transfer HDTV rentals off our aTV now, what will the restrictions be on an Apple DVR? I'm certain Apple could revolutionize the DVR, but the danger of angering all the studios and TV networks may be to big a threat to their iTunes business. The third party EyeTV solution will likely be superior for a couple years at least. You can already automatically convert your recordings to aTV and iPhone compatible formats, sync, and share recordings. Remote scheduling, I don't know, but there are "intelligent" program guide selections that adjust times due to schedule shifts.

I plan to put a Mac Mini in the living room when they update it and replace my Tivo. Tivo is great (vastly superior to cable company DVRs), but the monthly fee thing still sucks.

Methinks this be a wee bit of Idea Recycling.