Sending you a one hour show will take almost two days!

This is the part I don't understand. Yeah, you can swap programs with friends. But, not only do they have to have a Replay TV 4000, but they also need to have a fast internet connection.

In addition to this, the video quality would have to be greatly compressed, otherwise the time required to send the file would not be worth it.

I've always been an advocate of the process that you mentioned, where the programs are stored on a central server with an ultra-fast connection.

Ultimately, this is where television should head. When a new program is produced, it's made available on these centralized servers (you'd probably at least one one for every metro area). Then, the user at home goes to his cable box, selects the show he wants to watch, and it's sent down to their box which has a built in hard drive.

Now, the networking would be a nightmare for this...Imagine 1 million people all requesting different shows at the same time. That's why they'd have to have a lot of servers setup. But, I think it can be done...