On iTunes and DVR's...

I'm not sure, but I think this is a first: Snapstream Beyond TV has a DVD burining/iTunes plugin for their DVR software.

The cool thing about this? I can now dump my tv shows to DVD AND to my iPod. The cooler part is that the iTunes integration is totally hands-off, so I can just plug the iPod in to my comptuer, and while it charges at night, it grabs the latest shows off my DVR, saves them to my iTunes library, and dumps them to the iPod.

Oh, and with Beyond TV Link, I can use the tuners on my HTPC to record a show while I watch a different show on the main PC and my daughter watches something else on another computer. The cool thing about this is that instead of running coax to every room, I just run a home run to the room with the HTPC, and my tuners and my cable modem all plug in there. Much cleaner. True, it means I need a computer to watch TV anywhere but the living room, but it also means that I can take my video with me anywhere.

From iTunes to an MP3 player

I have a Creative Zen Portable Media Center.

I love it.

It plays movies, MP3's, WMA's, and has a 14 hour battery life (playing music) and a 7 hour battery life playing video.

However, I was having a hard time converting iTunes songs to run on the PMC.

Enter two tools: QTFairUse, and Winamp Pro. With QTFairUse, I can remove the protection on the iTunes files. Winamp Pro will play the songs after that (they have a m4a extension). Now I can right-click on a file in Winamp, select "Send To->Format Converter", and select Mp3 as the format. Winamp then happily loads the files on my PMC.

Yes, it's still some work, but with the advent of DRM free music on iTunes, it'll be even easier.