Apple patent points to potential portable DVR


Apple has been both incredibly slow to adopt new features, and yet cutting edge with new ideas for its portable media players. It took forever for the iPhone to get stereo Bluetooth support, but there's an app for darn near everything. It took forever to Apple to make an iPod with a radio tuner, but the new Nano can both listen to radio and record movies. Now, it looks like an iPod that can tune into TV signals and record what you watch could be on its way.

Yesterday, the U.S. Patent Office published an Apple patent that indicates TV tuning and DVR capabilities for future iPod models.

The details are sketchy (literally; the information is little more than diagrams in a patent application), but they seem to describe a system to watch and record video through various content streams (local broadcast, Internet) on an iPod. This could mean a built-in feature for future iPods, or it could mean an accessory you plug into it. Either way, in a few years maybe we'll be watching TV on our iPods.

Will Greenwald

[Source: Patently Apple via Gizmodo] [Photo: Patently Apple]

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