Why TiVo matters

Mike Langberg in the San Jose Mercury News (the site is currently down): Competition puts TiVo in precarious position.

What Langberg -- and every other newspaper columnist who has praised digital video recorder technology -- neglects to say is this:

If TiVo goes out of business, you can bet the farm that many of the technological advances and digital freedoms now enjoyed by the public will disappear if the cable and satellite giants are the only ones that decide what features our recording devices will have.