TVSquad

Have been itching for a fix of South Park, Spongebob or Bonanza?

Well, bite down on some leather, drink plenty of fluids, and get ready for some long nights of withdrawal, because Viacom is pulling 18 channels off the air from all of Time Warner Cable's outlets in protest over their recent carriage fee raises.

That means if you're a TWC customer and a fan of anything on Comedy Central, VH1, Spike, Nickelodeon, Logo, CMT or (if you're completely blind and deaf) MTV, you're boned.

Time Warner will soon be offering its users a way to stream Internet video to their television screens as part of an overall home networking system. In short, Time Warner is getting into the same business that Apple TV has already gotten into long ago.

"We're actually going to have equipment we make available to subscribers," said Chief Executive Glenn Brit at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York this past Friday. "It's actually going to be a new wireless cable modem that will allow you to network everything in your house."

Time Warner president Jeff Bewkes says cable providers should be working toward providing on-demand versions of every television program from every television network.

If consumers can watch any show they want any time they want, he argues, cable providers can save the time and money it takes to install personal video recorders in their houses. Of course, by eliminating the need for PVRs, cable companies could also be removing the consumer's ability to skip advertisements. "Free" video-on-demand would have to be advertising supported, and that means cable providers would disable the fast-forward function.

And that's why I don't really see Bewkes' plan working. Certainly one of the most appealing aspects of a PVR is that you can watch shows whenever you feel like it. But being able to pause, rewind, fast-forward, and yes, skip commercials is another part of it. Would you be willing to pay as much for DVD purchases and rentals if there were ads that you couldn't skip?

While the world waits with baited breath for the outcome of the Cablevision networked PVR trial, xchange magazine went and looked at the implications the trial could have for other cable television providers.

Comcast and Time Warner Cable executives say if Cablevision succeeds in its bid to overturn a ruling blocking the company's remote-storage personal video recorder service, those companies could offer their own networked PVRs.

Remote storage devices offer several benefits for cable providers. Customers get to record the programs they want to watch, but the cable company doesn't have to send a box to each subscriber. This cuts down on hardware costs, as well as maintenance.

A Comcast exec told xchange the company would definitely launch a network PVR if the courts rule in favor of Cablevision. A Time Warner executive wouldn't go that far, but he said the company does see the benefits of a networked system.

Yes, for everyone who has been waiting for a network devoted to nothing but skiiing (I'm one to talk; if I had The Tennis Channel I'd watch it 24/7), this is your lucky day. Or, to be more exact, some day in 2008 will be your lucky day.

That's when The Ski Channel launches. It's a new network devoted to, um, skiiing. I can't tell if it's going to be a regular network or something else, because it is described as a "network with distribution on video-on-demand and multimedia platforms." OK.

I was wondering how they'll fill the time with just skiiing, but they have that covered. From the article:

Sure, if the cable guy accidentally hooks you up with a couple of extra channels, you might conveniently forget to call the company and complain about the error. But what do you do when you order a new PVR and its hard drive is partially full when it arrives -- with porn.

One Consumerist reader had just that problem. His new Time Warner box arrived, but before he could sit down and help set it up, he had to go out and run some errands, leaving his wife and 3 and 8 year old nieces to program in shows to record.

As his wife hits the list button, up pops a screen showing the previous owner's recordings, including Hole Diggers - Part 2, which begins playing while his wife tries to figure out how to make the menu disappear.

Yes, this guy should obviously call Time Warner and complain. But the moral of this story is that you should probably check out any new hardware you get before using it, especially if it looks like it may be used. You never know what you're going to find.