I just watched a recent Nova that highlighted a similar technology, but using plastic rather than glass as the electrolyte. Check out a short clip about it here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/n.... Seems like it has the same advantages, but without issues of brittleness, given that his sample batteries are shown being flexed. On the other hand, the plastic might be more susceptible to cold than the glass electrolyte.

Actually, with existing TiVos, both 1 and 4 are available. It's called TiVoToGo. For downloading content to your TiVo, you simply encode video to MPEG-2 and put it in the correct folder on your computer, as determined when you installed the TiVo Desktop software. Yeah, you've got to re-encode to MPEG-2, but with ffmpeg and a shell script, that's no big deal. There's numerous programs for the PC that'll also do the re-encode for you. In fact, TiVo Desktop software might just do it now, too, but since I use a Mac, I don't know for sure.

As for four, again with TiVoToGo functionality, you can download programs off the TiVo and onto your local hard drive. They are DRM protected, but can be played back on Macs or PCs. Actually, with software that'll strip the DRM, you can also play the programs back on Linux. Apparently TiVoToGo functionality is not yet supported on the HD units, but is suppose to arrive soon. I'm guessing extra work had to be done to protect the content streams, since the content providers are extra paranoid about HD content. There's also numerous programs that'll automatically download shows off your TiVo when they record, download them to your PC, and re-encode them for common portable media players like iPods, Zunes, PSPs, etc...

You'll probably never see two on a commercial box. Yes, you've added the functionality as a plug-in to MCE, but if that plug-in starts to become popular, you'll probably see it disappear. Other companies before TiVo have been taken to court and heavily sued because they provided a PVR that stripped commercials. So far, they've either won in court or driven court costs so high, the defendants folded. Either way, if either the MCE plug-in or Myth plug-in becomes popular and comes under the radar of the media providers, you'll probably see those features going away. TiVo, as the most visible of the PVR solutions, has had to play a very delicate game of providing features customers want balanced against the desires of the media providers, who can make their life hell if they become too threatened by the technology.

And as a final note, I'd like three, too.