Your TV just came another step closer to your computer. TiVo has partnered with YouTube to bring its content to broadband-connected subscribers with the Series 3 and HD set-top boxes. This means you’ll no longer have to drag the laptop downstairs or force everybody to huddle around the tiny screen of your iPhone at parties to show your guests the latest pratfalls. Just flick on your TV and you’re set.

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How to Record More TV

Cost: $100-$200
Time: 10-60 Minutes
Easy | | | | | Hard

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Make a Laptop DVR

Cost: $110
Time: 30 minutes
Easy | | | | | Hard

How It Works:

1. Use the CD to install on your laptop the software and drivers for the Instant TV card. Restart, and plug in the card.
2. Connect to a video source (cable box or jack, TiVo) using either the S-video plugs or composite (red, white and yellow) plugs.
3. Open the Ulead InstaMedia software (the CD will also install a program called Instant TV, but it's clunky). Select "Settings." Choose your connection type, then choose the recording quality you want (a medium setting is fine for laptop playback).
4. Sit back and watch TV. Hit "Timer Record" or use titantv.com to schedule a recording.

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Outgoing Federal Communi-cations Commission chair Michael Powell once told an audience at the International Consumer Electronics Show that TiVo was “God's machine.” He's right. Once you've had one, you can never go back to dumb TV, where you're stuck watching whatever is actually on at that moment.

Today you can buy similar devices for radio—sometimes called RiVos—including Griffin's Radio Shark and Neuros's MP3 Computer, that connect to your computer and record programs to your hard drive.

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Dept: Void Your Warranty

Tech: TiVo drive upgrade

Cost: $210

Time: 3 hours

DABBLER | | | | | MASTER

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Take one digital video capture card, a big cheap hard disk, a home-brew infrared receiver, and a seven-year-old PC out of your nearest closet or dumpster. Add some free software and—voila!—you have a personal video recorder, your own homemade Tivo. As with Tivo, watch what you want, when you want. Thumb your nose at the head of Turner Broadcasting or whoever else is angry that you have broken your "contract" to sit through commercials and are "stealing" programming if you don't. Know that you have built this insidious entertainment appliance yourself.

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