I hate to say it, but the more I'm reading about the NDS box, the more I'm thinking that it isn't worth hacking my DTivo to run 4.0 for the HMO option. It all comes down to the UI. I can go on and on about how nice it is to be able to hack the Tivo, but the only "hack" I've done to mine is adding another hard drive. And the only other "hack" I'm looking at door would just be giving the Tivo features that other players will already have. I guess the TivoWeb's ability to burn DVD's on my PC is the only thing that the NDS box seems to be lacking.

Another odd thing about the NDS box is that you'll basically have just one in your home. It will have 4 tuners (or more?) and will record in MPEG4 to get more use out of the hard drive. Apparently, DirecTV is launching new satellites to gradually move to MPEG4. Then, around the rest of your home, you will have "video terminals" that will have no built-in hard drive, but will be able to stream video from the main box over a fast ethernet (initially) or wireless (eventually) connection. The advantage to this would be far less coaxial cable running around the home. Music and photo sharing will be supported too.

It also appears that the main box will support HDTV whereas the terminals will only be SD at first. The theroy being that most people have one HDTV in their main viewing area and SD sets around the rest of the house. HD terminals will come later (but may require giga-ethernet?).

I guess the boxes will also be both MPEG2 and MPEG4 since these boxes will also be able to record HDTV broadcasts over the air. Toss a good UI and I'm sold! (Oh yeah, I want to be able to burn those Tori Amos appearances to DVD for my wife too).

They say this stuff will be coming to the US as soon as this year (which means summer of next year I bet). Does NDS already have a presence in the UK? Do you guys have any feedback on it? Is there any news that you too may be the same equipment? Is there any MPEG4 satellite in the UK?