Thomas Hawk picked up on a pretty interesting idea being kicked around at Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail on remote scheduling of TV recording. I have to agree it is a great way to think about integrating the computer experience – in or out of home with the media center.
Here’s the vision photoshopped up by Chris:
Fortunately, we are actually pretty close. Check out this screen shot I grabbed from TitanTV:
It works without any plugin for your browse, but you do have to be logged into their site. The next step would be to extend this functionality externally so you could do it from any mention of a program anywhere online. The trick will be making sure that you are able to find reference to the show. My guess is that you would need a special tag to say this is a TV program in the same way that feed:// is starting to get used for RSS subscription links.
As you can see in this additional screenshot(click for a full view), there are quite a few devices supported on the TitanTV site, but these are all computer connected devices. The first major player to utilize something like this could have a serious coup on their hands… of course if this is even something that a mass audience wants and understands. DVRs are still a niche product category, but growing quickly thanks to the rollout from the cable and satellite providers.