that's odd. I've never seen an advertisement whenever pausing live TV, or when pausing recorded shows. Yes, there's a 'more about $foo_show' item that pops up, but I clicked on it exactly once years ago and never noticed it again.

I'm unsure about the OTA programming thing, but since the device is basically geared to be a 'cable box replacement'. It has a niche and it's a good one.

All the times I've called the TiVO call center (it was in Canada, I believe) the techs were quick, gave good answers to my questions, and even help me grandfather in my USD12.99/mo subscription on to my Premiere device.

I've used MS-based DVR's in the past and was shocked at the poor quality and glaring usability problems.

Reminds me of This old chestnut from the Onion.

Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Put another core on that fucker, too. That's right. Three cores, one chip, and make the third one play MP3's or someshit. You heard me--the third core plays MP3's. It's a whole new way to think about computing. Don't question it. Don't say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we're on the edge--the razor's edge--and I feel like dancing.

I started hacking away with an Arduino a few weeks ago and have loved it. Sensors, motors, potentiometer's, MUX/DEMUX, programming, soldering, it's all there.

You don't even have to be particularly interested in robotics. For example, my first project is a analog drum machine that fires off MIDI messages to my DAW. Lots of pots, wires, understanding low-level MIDI interfacing, it's a blast. So anyway, yeah. I can't recommend electronics hacking / robotics enough.

imag0

If you want something completely under your control, you do not put it online. How hard is this?

... How do they get it into the kitchen?

Really? A toddler pulling the trigger of a .380? A toddler?

I smell bullshit.

The blurb reminds me of the venerable Robokoneko project that never quite got off the ground.

I never asked the Amazon sales team because I never expected to get an answer like that

What. An honest one?

There are PCI Compliant service providers out there, in fact, Visa has a list of them[1]. I work for one.

[1]
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/cisp-list-of-pcidss-compliant-service-providers.pdf