Amid the recession and layoffs, there are some glimpses of employment hope and opportunities to help you make informed decisions on what technology to spend money.

Sony Electronics and Comcast announced Sunday that they have partnered to open a unique retail experience in Philadelphia. The store is named Sony Style Comcast Labs and will serve as a place where consumers can learn about emerging technologies and experience new digital devices.

The co-branded retail store and technology lab, which opened to the public March 16, showcases the latest innovative products and services from both companies and previews future Comcast technology, products, and services.

A Sony Style retail store

(Credit: Gizdomo)

Examples of future technologies that Comcast unveiled to Philadelphia consumers for the first time include "The Future of High-Speed Internet" and "The Future of Home Phone Service."

The former offers the experience of Internet surfing and downloading at 100Mbps, about 20 times faster than regular existing cable connection. To put this in perspective, at this speed you can use up Comcast's 250GB ration in about 40 hours.

The latter, on the other hand, shows of what you can do with the future enhanced cordless telephones. Obviously, they can do a lot more than just place calls; they also handle e-mails, IM, text messaging, and access to Yellow Pages.

As for Sony, the new Sony Style Comcast Labs feature the best of Sony's electronics. Sony's current showcase includes Bravia HD LCD televisions, Vaio PCs, dSLR and Cyber-shot digital cameras, Handycam camcorders, and PSP and PlayStation 3 game consoles. Emerging technologies such as organic light-emitting diode TVs are also shown.

Comcast will also showcase all of its products and services from voice to video and Internet, and it will demonstrate how they work together seamlessly for the consumer.

The Sony Style Comcast Labs is located at the base of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia.

(Credit: Comcast)

In an effort to keep/acquire new broadband customers, Comcast is testing Wi-Fi service at about 120 New Jersey Transit rail stations, according to DSLReports. The trial is for existing customers only and is designed to gauge user interest, spokeswoman Mary Nell Westbrook said, adding that no formal announcement of the service has been made.

The move comes after Cablevision launched its Optimum Wi-Fi program throughout the tristate area last fall. The two companies are collaborating to extend the reach of their wireless networks, enabling Comcast customers to access their operator's Wi-Fi at train stations in Cablevision territory and vice versa.

Although the two companies worked together on technical tests, the Comcast and Cablevision services in New Jersey will remain entirely separate, though there will apparently be some gear cohabitation. "A Comcast customer cannot access any of the Optimum Wi-Fi Hot Zones," notes Westbrook. "For the trial, our services are both available at all of the locations that are included--generally New Jersey Transit commuter rail stations--but the two services are offered separately."

Rail stations with free Wi-Fi include those along the Northeast Corridor, Morris, Essex, Montclair-Boonton, Main-Bergen County, the North Jersey Coast, Pascack Valley, and Raritan Valley lines. Coverage areas at each station include platforms and parking lots, but do not extend to the trains.

I just got my digital TV converter box. I'm planning on dumping Comcast, and this is the first step. The next is either DSL or Clearwire or something--anything--but the "traffic shaping" cable giant's offers. In shopping around, I've noticed that many broadband sellers (Comcast included) are offering a special price and, if you sign up for a two-year contract, the ability to lock that price in for life.

Sounds good, right? $29.99 for broadband, from now till you switch carriers, even if their prices go up. The thing is, it's not a great deal.

A few years ago, this wouldn't have happened. It would have been unthinkable, too terrible even to imagine. No, a few years ago, I never would have missed the season premiere of Lost.

So imagine my surprise when my boyfriend and I were minding our own business, watching our previously recorded Top Chef two nights ago, when, during a commercial break we were barreling through in fast forward, I happened to catch the words "Lost returns tonight." Stop. Rewind. What?

(Credit: ABC)

We backed up to the beginning of the ad, and sure enough, Bravo HD was proclaiming that Lost had returned a few hours before!

Had we set it to record? No. Had we even known it was coming back this week? No! We don't watch ads anymore. Ever. But without them, we are apparently living in a dark age so backwards it's as though TV Guide hasn't been invented yet. Now my grandpa is more informed than I am about television culture.

If we didn't have a DVR, we surely would have known, because I bet Lost ads have dominated the airwaves for the past few months. Lost isn't a show to announce itself softly: it usually has weeks of setup, marathons of previous seasons, call-in shows, etc. If we didn't have the ability to fast forward through that dreck, we would have known to be home, in front of the TV, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Sure, we would also have been brain-washed by a desire for a Snuggie and Wendy's new chicken sandwich, but information comes at a cost. As Tina Fey would say, "a doy."

(Credit: Seagate)

There's a good chance you've never heard of Pace, but back in April, the company--a developer of cable and satellite set-top box digital video recorders--acquired the set-top box and connectivity solutions business of Royal Philips Electronics. That fact has very little to do with this post, other than to give you an idea of the size of Pace and how it has its DVRs running in more than 17 million homes. (Pace DVRs work in any regions that are serviced by Comcast and/or Dish Network.)

So maybe you have a Pace box in your home right now and you want to know more about this silver box above since it's certified to work with its DVRs. This is the Seagate Showcase. It was announced back in May and is expected to ship soon. Available in 500GB and 1TB capacities, it's a DVR expander using a Seagate Pipeline HD hard drive designed specifically to handle the challenges of recording and playing HD video in a home theater environment.

You can get one with either a USB 2.0 or eSATA interface depending on your DVR's port options. Even if you don't have a Pace product, it may work with your cable company's DVR (just be sure to check with your service provider and/or the manufacturer of your box).The 500GB is available for preorder for $179.99. No word yet on pricing for the 1TB.

If you can't wait and need space now, maybe Western Digital's expander will work for you. It's limited to 500GB, but it too comes in eSATA and USB 2.0 versions and is certified to work with TiVo HD and Series 3 models as well as Scientific Atlanta Explorer and Dish Network ViP HD DVRs.

I never thought I'd be so happy to see Comcast's second-rate DVR interface.

(Credit: Matthew Elliott/CBS Interactive)

If you'll indulge me, let me share with you the final chapter in my Comcast + TiVo tale. The latest glitch with the service has proven to be the final straw. Succumbing to mounting pressure from my wife, yesterday I canceled the service that put TiVo's software on a Comcast cable box. After a slow start and troubling summer, our long regional nightmare is over.

Because I was curious to try TiVo service outside a TiVo-branded box and wasn't all that enamored with Comcast's regular DVR service in the first place, I signed us up for the service nearly five months ago. After struggling with the service all summer, I almost threw in the towel last month but then it suddenly improved. TiVo's refusals to display live TV or record a show became less frequent, and the service seemed to speed up to where the lags in bringing up the guide, changing the channel, or initiating a recording were nearly tolerable. Toward the end of last week, however, we found ourselves locked out of the On Demand service and without the ability to record anything. I called Comcast and discovered that this was a problem with its TiVo service only. Before hanging up the phone, I scheduled a service call to return me to the old Comcast DVR service.

What I didn't see yesterday: the end of the Wimbledon men's final.

(Credit: CBS Sports)

It's being hailed as the greatest Wimbledon final in history. This is a tennis tournament that has been played since 1877, and supposedly yesterday's five-set match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal topped them all. I say supposedly because my Comcast + TiVo box decided that midway through the fifth set was a good time to stop recording the match. This is merely the latest but--since I'm one of the 12 tennis fans left in this country--certainly the most annoying of the bugs I've encountered with Comcast + TiVo service over the past month. If the promised software update isn't rolled out before the fall TV season, I'm going to return to the old Comcast DVR service.

Back to yesterday. I picked up the action in the fourth set (my tennis fandom is offset by fatherhood) and starting recording at the beginning of the fifth set with the intention of watching the conclusion at my leisure--after dinner was consumed and kids put to bed. I actually recorded the program after Wimbledon since the match had been delayed earlier by rain. I padded the recording with an extra 2 hours, knowing that one does not play fifth set tiebreakers at Wimbledon. I was confident I had given myself more than enough space to capture the end of the match. Later, I returned to my 2 hour and 28 minute recording to watch the exciting conclusion only to find the recording cut out after about 10 minutes--at 3-3 in the fifth set. The green status bar at the bottom of the screen showed I had more than two hours remaining on the recording, but it wouldn't move past 3-3 in the fifth set. I reset the box--something I've done regularly the past five weeks--hoping it would allow me to access the rest of the recording. No luck.

In the two years using Comcast's own DVR service, I never had a recording fouled up like this. Comcast's DVR had its problems, but it proved to be a reliable recorder of shows--a key element to any digital video recorder in my estimation. Comcast + TiVo suffers from the same bugs as my old DVR service but adds new and interesting bugs. Like Comcast DVR, Comcast + TiVo freezes, stores up the 18 commands I entered in frustration on the remote during the freeze before unleashing a fury of rapid actions. Like Comcast DVR's series recording, TiVo's Season Pass also records three Daily Shows and three Countdown with Keith Olbermann shows per day, even though I set it up to record first-run only in both cases. (Comcast + TiVo does automatically create a folder of any show of which you have more than one episode recorded to help keep things organized.)

On to the new and interesting Comcast + TiVo bugs; let me tell you about them.

Turning on the TV has become a thrilling roll of the dice. Aside from the expected picture of live TV, the many outcomes upon powering on the set include a blank, black screen; a frozen screen--often of a channel I never watch or one that I don't subscribe to; a blank screen with the message "Cannot display live TV"; and a tiny image of live TV in the upper-right corner of my screen.

Big TV, tiny image: one of the many bugs with Comcast + TiVo service.

(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

This last outcome is most intriguing. I can change the channel, and receive both audio and video, but the picture remains stuck in the tiny preview box from the "TiVo Central" screen--which is even smaller than the preview box on the channel guide. It defeats the purpose of owning an HDTV, to be sure. Starting an On Demand program and then returning to live TV sometimes fixes the problem; failing that, I must reset the cable box by unplugging it and plugging it back in before I get a picture. The reverse of the resizing problem also crops up from time to time, where the TV picture gets stuck in full-screen mode. It's less of a problem but means it doesn't resize itself to fit inside the preview box of the channel guide.

Unplugging the cable box to reset it corrects the blank and frozen screens, too, but it also means I must reprogram my remote each time I do. I've committed the 30-second skip code to memory at this point: Rewind > Slow > Fast Forward > Play > 3 > 0 > Advance.

Two things I don't like about the remote: there are no one-day forward and back buttons, and the Select and On Demand buttons are too close to one another. The Comcast DVR remote had buttons that let you jump forward (and back) 24 hours, which was convenient when hunting for a show or confirming that I did in fact have Lost set to record on Thursday. You can jump forward to a particular time and day and channel with TiVo, but it's not as simple as jumping forward 24 hours at the press of a button. And with the On Demand button located in the center of the remote and directly below the select button, I frequently enter the On Demand screen by accident. The slowness of the TiVo interface only exacerbates this error.

... and wait... and wait... and wait...

(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

As I discovered on day one, the Comcast + TiVo box is painfully slow. Navigating the channel guide requires a large dose of patience, and setting a recording takes roughly a minute for the command to register. In one case, the "Please Wait" screen lasted 2 minutes, 14 seconds. With my old Comcast DVR, you could set a recording in less than 5 seconds.

My contacts at Comcast and TiVo tell me that a software update is in the works, but they've been vague on timing. "Coming soon" is as close to a date as I've received. I hope it arrives before the finals of the U.S. Open in September.

Perhaps a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick will speed up the Comcast + Tivo interface.

(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

As a New Englander, I live in Comcast country. Comcast has been slowly rolling out TiVo service, and yesterday I upgraded my Comcast DVR for Comcast + TiVo service. Though it should be as simple as Comcast pushing the new software to your existing cable box, the company dispatches a tech to your home for the installation. The tech will check your cable signal to ensure a trouble-free TiVo installation and subsequent user experience. And in my case, since I was using a two-year old Scientific Atlanta box, Comcast replaced it with a Motorola 3416 box.

The installation went smoothly. My cable signal's levels were found to be in acceptable ranges, and it took Comcast about 30 minutes to push the TiVo software to my new cable box. The tech told me that when Comcast first started rolling out TiVo service, installations took anywhere from a couple hours to a full day, but that they've gotten better at it to where an installation could be as quick as 10 minutes. When I asked him about customer response, he said he knew of only one subscriber who ditched TiVo to return to Comcast's DVR software--a little old lady with a poor signal in a nursing home. The cause? A green video screen--presumably interrupting episodes of Matlock.

The TiVo guide shows more channels on the screen than Comcast's own DVR and is blissfully free of ads, but it is painfully slow.

(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

For the upgrade, I'll pay an additional $2.95 per month on top of my current $12.95 DVR charge, plus a one-time $16.95 installation fee.

After using Comcast + TiVo for a night, here are my initial likes and dislikes. Note that I've never been a TiVo subscriber and am comparing the service to the Comcast DVR it replaced.

Likes:

• The TiVo guide lists seven rows of channels instead of the four and an ad that you get with Comcast's guide.
• The guide indicates which shows are in HD (not all shows on HD channels are in HD).
• Fast-forward has the auto-back function so that when you are coming out of a commercial, you land at the start of your show. Time Warner's DVR service in New York worked the same way, and I missed this functionality with Comcast's DVR. Then again, I was able to reprogram a button on my old Comcast remote to act as a 30-second skip button--something I will look into for the Comcast TiVo remote.

Comcast's TiVo remote is very similar in form and function as a standard TiVo remote but includes A, B, C, and D buttons.
(Credit: Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)
• It was easy to program the TiVo remote to work with my Vizio plasma TV and Harman Kardon receiver. I didn't have to hunt online for the four-digit codes. The TiVo settings screen provided me one code for my TV, which worked. Of the handful of codes listed for my receiver, the third one did the trick.
• On Demand offerings are better organized and easier to search through.
• The new Motorola 3416 box reports a capacity of 158GB. I believe my old Scientific Atlanta box had an 80GB drive, so I won't need to delete shows after recording a few HD movies and/or sporting events.

Dislikes:

• The TiVo interface is sloooooow! There's a delay when bringing up the guide, followed then by a delay for the information to load. There's a delay when scrolling through the guide--page by page or channel by channel. There's a delay when changing the channel. There's an excruciatingly slow delay after you hit record--roughly 15 seconds before the command goes through. My channel-flipping ways may be severely curtailed.
• I had to watch the season finale of Lost last night in standard def, even though I set it to record on ABC HD. It seems that I'm not getting ABC HD at the moment--at least from the Manchester, NH, affiliate, which lists none of its shows as being available in HD. This may be specific to my area or home; the investigation is ongoing.
• When you hit the info button with Comcast's DVR service, the information was displayed along the bottom of the screen. With TiVo, the info screen is a large rectangle that takes up the entire upper half of the screen. I can't think of a worse place for it. And after you select a channel from the guide or simply change the channel, you'll need to hit Exit on your remote or sit through a long 10 seconds of this info screen. Annoying.

After one day, I'm not sure I'll keep TiVo because of how slow it runs. Comcast's DVR often got tripped up where it would pause and then rifle through the 18 commands that I had entered in frustration on the remote. But those instances happened only occasionally, and the software was much more responsive than what I've experienced thus far with TiVo. I hope Comcast will soon roll out a service update that speeds up TiVo.

In the meantime, I'll continue to poke around Comcast + TiVo service and report back with my findings. And I'll find an answer for why ABC HD isn't coming through.

Comcast said Wednesday it has changed its mind on a joint wireless communication venture with Sprint-Nextel, according to a Reuters report.

The service, called Pivot, was begun as a partnership between the cable giant, Sprint, Time Warner, Cox Communications, and Advanced/Newhouse Communications in 2006. It offered a package of services, including TV, broadband, and both a landline and wireless phone service.

"We decided to discontinue the service because the product required a lot of operational complexities, so we decided it wasn't the approach we wanted for the long term," said a Comcast spokesperson.

Well, that's one way of putting it. By the end of last year, demand was so low for Pivot they stopped marketing it. Part of the problem is that nearly 80 percent of U.S. residents already subscribe to a cell phone service. And the cable operators weren't given much freedom in pricing or packaging the Pivot service to make it enticing enough for people to switch carriers.

Comcast said its Pivot mobile customers would be switched to a similar Sprint package.

CNET News.com's Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report.