PC TiVo?

Over on John Robb's Radio Weblog, he mentioned that InterVideo has a product out called WinDVR. From the looks of it, it is supposed to work just like a TiVo. Looking at it I wonder why not just get the TiVo.

Being someone who owns a TiVo, I know that mine gets a lot of use. It's on and recording stuff all the time. It's got a 30 gig disk in it that tends to be about 3/4s full. It's a nice self contained box that just works. It even downloads updates for itself when it phones home.

On the other hand. WinDVR would run on my PC (just barely). I'd need to go out and buy another disk (because a 15 gig disk probably wouldn't let me buy much. I'd need to buy a tv tuner card. And, I'd have a program that runs under windows. Judging by my past history with windows this would probably mean that I'd not want to use it while doing the only other thing I do with my PC. Playing games. I'm sure one would end up slowing down the other. So where's the benefit? The big bonus I see is that there isn't the monthly fee that TiVo has.

Some other things I just thought of. This looks like it was mostly designed to watch TV on your computer. It'll output to your TV though. It has no remote. So if one DID use it to watch TV, you'd have to get up and go to the computer every time you wanted to change the channel. Maybe if you are someone who wants to be in front of your computer every second of the day. But isn't that what laptops are for :).