TVSquad

TiVo is announcing a new promotional bundle that will net you a TiVo HD, a TiVo WiFi adapter, and product lifetime service for $698, which is less than the original cost of a TiVo Series3 without any service at all.

Of course, if you expect to scrap your TiVo within a year or two, you can save a few bucks by picking up a $299 TiVo HD and signing up for an annual or monthly contract. But if you plan to keep your TiVO HD for 3 years or more, it's hard to beat this price. Oh, and TiVo will throw in a plush toy. So there's that to consider.

The offer is good through June 16th, but TiVo loves to extend offers like these. I mean, don't come hunting me down with burning torches if this offer really does expire, but I think it's a safe bet that once this promotion expires, TiVo will offer a different one.

Well, he's been offered a chance to work a one-hour shift, anyway. Taco Bell Corporation sent a letter to Kevin Federline asking him to work for one hour at an unspecified Taco Bell location so he could see "what a great place Taco Bell is to work." The offer came after Federline made a Super Bowl ad for Nationwide Insurance that shows him having lost everything and working at a fast food restaurant. The commercial angered the National Restaurant Association, which said the commercial was an insult to fast food workers.

I have to agree with Federline's insistence that the point of the commercial is to poke fun at himself and not fast food workers, and I have to disagree that Taco Bell is a great place to work. I've worked in fast food, and every minute spent behind that counter is like having your soul slowly extracted from your body until you're nothing more than a human husk without the ability to feel anything, physically or emotionally. At least, that was my experience. I respect anyone who works in that field, because it's a demanding and mostly thankless job.

We've mentioned to you that the second-annual New York Television Festival will be held in September. Think of it as a Sundance for TV pilots; 22 pilots submitted by people from all over the country will be considered, and prizes will be given out. Unlike last year, most of the submitted pilots were made specifically for the festival, some of which will star actors with previous TV experience. All pilots will be under consideration for pick-up; indeed, two pilots from last year's festival got picked up by the A&E and OLN networks.

Because the stakes are a little higher, the festival, in conjunction with video hosting partner MSN, has announced that the $10,000 will be given to the winner of the festival's top prize. Also remember that they are co-sponsoring a "Best Pitch" contest with the IFC, so the creativity should be a-flowin' in New York next month.

TV Squad is going to be attending the festival, and we hope to get a bunch of cool stuff from there, including interviews with the pilots' stars and producers, so stay tuned for our coverage!

[via Bloglines]

According to this Washington Post article, our corporate benefactors over at AOL have decided to retool their video site to put more emphasis on user-uploaded videos. Of course, they're doing this in an effort to capture a piece of the massive success experienced by YouTube and Google Video over the last year or so. The new video site is set to launch on Friday, and will have a seach function similar to that of the other sites; there will also be 45 on-demand video channels, including exclusive programming from cable channels like Comedy Central, the History Channel, and Nickelodeon. According to TV Week, the site will also have an iTunes-style paid video download component.

I wonder how many people are actually going to upload videos to the AOL site. AOL has a huge built-in audience, but many of them still use dial-up, which will make it hard for them to download videos. So that means our corporate parents are going to have to market this to non-customers somehow, which will be tough. I admire that their trying to modernize their content, but it makes me wonder if they're just reacting to a trend rather than blazing their own trail.

[via Lost Remote and Bloglines]