Anything that keeps that unholy trinity alive, I’m all for.

One, with so many businesses clinging to old business models, it is cool seeing Best Buy trying to change with the times, to some degree. With the whole Napster arrangement, this could be their way to have a new business model (getting content into your homes).

Two, I simply like to see anything that might help Tivo. My wife and I love our Tivo (I even called it one of the top 5 tech items a wife can love, on my site), and I worry about the company’s health, so anything that can give them more subscribers is a good thing in my eyes.

Great site by the way. Just discovered it.

Jeff, That occurred to me as well. Though given my headline, I’m obviously leaning in the other direction – given TiVo’s past reluctance to dilute (expand) their brand/experience and perhaps my own wishful thinking. They should have started selling TiVo universal remotes and branded DVD-only boxes years ago in my opinion. Pitching a TiVo platform without DVR functionality would be a monumental shift. Not a bad idea given the fact they’ve lost 25% of their customers at the same time that DVR usage has increased exponentially – they could use a new angle.

-TiVo … desperately wants people to stop thinking of its technology purely as a way to pause and record live television.

That remains an important feature in TiVo boxes. But over the last few years, as cable and satellite companies introduced their own DVRs, TiVo has tried to position its device as a media hub that combines traditional television with a broad range of content from the Internet.

Current owners of broadband-connected TiVos, for example, can watch YouTube videos, download movies from Amazon .com and stream movies from Netflix on their televisions.

But TiVo has had a hard time telling people about that.

“The kind of strategic marketing embrace this deal involves will very substantially advance the understanding of what we now have to offer,” Mr. Rogers said.

As part of the deal, Best Buy also plans to use TiVo to offer advice and guidance on products like HDTVs and digital cameras and provide ways to buy these products via the television remote control. TiVo currently offers its users ways to order pizzas, buy products on Amazon and get movie tickets from Fandango from their TV sets. <– I want to buy products from Amazon through my Best Buy TV, btw.