I just stumbled upon some very interesting news that is pretty important, though most might skim past it at first blush.  The headline that was carried on this story in most outlets was pretty misleading, as it was in the Don Reisinger’s CNet article: “TiVo adds new Web videos, option to watch niche content.”

Knowing Don and his heavy involvement in podcasting, I’m guessing an editor wrote the headline for him – the real news is that video podcasts are now available on the TiVO, and this time they don’t require ridiculous computer workarounds.

One of the better write-ups of the matter I found was at Zatz Not Funny, actually:

I know I’m not the only one who’s been holding out for this… Today, TiVo will enable us Series3/HD owners to specify custom video podcast RSS feeds which aren’t found in their (growing) directory of web video. This is a welcome improvement over the TiVo Desktop 2.6 transcoding kludge. Although, it won’t reach its full potential until we can add and manage feed subscriptions from within a tivo.com web console. H.264 RSS enclosures are supported, although TiVo hasn’t specified anything further in regards bitrate, resolution, etc. I was hoping to get an advance look last night, but the TiVo team was racing out of the office forthe GDGT launch party. And who can blame them?

He provided some first-look screenshots:

This is a major improvement over implementations of the past, and could revive TiVo’s flagging product…

TiVo’s past implementation of podcast technology was horribly kludgy.  I talked about it when it first came out back when I was at Mashable:

Earlier today, it was announced that TiVo has more tightly added integration with their set-top box and Internet podcasts through the use of their TiVo Desktop for Windows. The program allows TiVo users to synchronize content between their box and their Windows computers and peripheral devices.As Podcasting News notes today, the process is still a bit convoluted, and likely out of reach for the average TiVo user.

In order to transfer videos from the PC to the TiVo, you need to link it with your account online. This requires both setting up the Windows Machine and going to your TiVo account online and making account settings changes. Then you head on over back to TiVo Desktop for Windows, click the Add Video button and then browse to the directory where your videos are stored. Once the directory is found and set, all the videos in that directory should be auto-transferred onto your TiVo.

As I noted, though, the process was far too complex for the average TiVo user to perform on a regular basis, though if it were implemented then as it is now, it couldn’t have been a better time for TiVo and its subscribers – right during the WGA strike and thus some of the world’s darkest times for trying to find quality programming through traditional means.

These days, web video has taken over.  Most online content producers don’t even bother creating MP4 feeds, opting instead for live video (as does legendary podcaster Leo Laporte) or straight to YouTube or YouTube style releases.

This has lead to the rise of devices like the Roku, engineered towards implementing Flash video playback on the settop box.