"Real" TiVo Comes to the PC with Liquid TV | TiVO PC

On Monday Nero announced Liquid TV | TiVo PC. I'm guessing if you ask Nero the product is called Liquid TV; if you ask TiVo it's TiVo PC (which I prefer).

The product comes with one year of TiVo service and will be available in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in October. MSRP will be $199 for a retail box (which includes a Hauppauge USB ATSC TV tuner and USB IR transceiver with paired remote control) or $99 for a downloadable software-only version. In terms of international roll-out, they indicated they will make announcements in 2009.

TiVo service renewal will be annual, at $99 a year. No mention of a lifetime plan, which kind of makes business sense since you could potentially move this from PC to PC forever, never worrying about hardware replacement.

Don't assume you can use a really old PC for this. The system requirements indicate it's going to require a decently up-to-date PC to run this. TiVo PC will support up to four TV tuners, one of which can be an external set-top box (ahem, system performance allowing, they note).

According to Nero's site, all of TiVo's standard functionality is available, including pause and rewind live TV, commercial skip, Season Pass, WishList, search, and KidZone.

TiVo PC also includes the features of Tivo's TiVo To Go add-on software, meaning transfer of show between computers on your home network, as well as being able to export them to mobile devices such as your iPod or PSP. Naturally, you can burn shows to a DVD as well.

Tom Rogers, CEO and President, TiVo said:

"Nero has done a superb job of bringing the TiVo experience to the PC, and have done so in a way that lives up to the rich TiVo legacy. To be able to extend the features of TiVo to a new platform without compromising the integrity of what has made TiVo such a revolutionary product is a significant achievement, one we know both new and old fans of TiVo will love."

For Mac fans, there's no note of any plans for a Mac version. Still, the ability to get a real TiVo experience, along with a year of service for $199, might be compelling to some do-it-your-selfers. Obviously most will prefer to stick with a box they just connect to their TV and cable box (or whatever).

What do you readers think? If you were in the market for a PC DVR setup, would the TiVo PC now be at the top of your list?