Convergence between the television and the home computer — a holy grail of the digital age — has largely eluded the industry, but the living-room screen is now emerging as a key battleground for software and Internet companies.

Improvements to the processors in TV sets are making it feasible to run Web applications on a TV without the need for a special set-top box, such as those offered by TiVo Inc. or Apple Inc. (AAPL).

While challenges remain, including technical issues and the reluctance of parts of the entertainment industry, companies are building chips and Web browsers for TVs, and others such as Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) are developing Web applications that can be accessed on a new generation of TV sets.

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TiVo (TIVO) this morning announced a multi-part deal with Best Buy (BBY) that includes the development of a special version of the TiVo player that would include specialized content–oh, okay, advertising–from the electronics retailer.

Or as the release puts it: “Best Buy intends to utilize TiVo’s robust platform to deliver educational and marketing messages directly to consumers.”

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TiVo (TIVO) shares this morning are heading lower after the company said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted a request by EchoStar (SATS) to stay a contempt order imposed by a lower court pending the outcome of EchoStar’s appeal in the the patent dispute between the two companies.

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TiVo (TIVO) shares are up sharply after hours after a federal court in Texas upheld the company’s patents in its closely watched infringement case against EchoStar (SATS). The Judge ruled that EchoStar and DISH Network (DISH) are in contempt of court, rejected their workaround of TiVo’s patent, ordered the companies to stop using TiVo technology in its DVRs, refused to stay its previous injunction against further violations of the patent and awarded TiVo another $103 million plus interest through April 2008. DISH previously paid nearly $105 million in damages in the case.

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GoDaddy’s famously risque Super Bowl ads always pull lots of eyeballs, but the company’s latest spots may have resulted in a little too much attention of the wrong kind.

Entrepreneur Brian Harrell, who manages hosting services for dozens of Christian churches and faith-based organizations and uses GoDaddy to host over 160 domains, says he’s pulled several of his clients off of GoDaddy’s servers after receiving numerous complaints about the company’s racy ads that aired during Sunday’s game.

“I know they’re trying to make sales, but that kind of content is not going to fly in the Christian community,” he says.

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Netflix (NFLX) is suddenly one of the Valley’s hottest companies, as the DVD-by-mail company gradually morphs into everyone’s favorite streaming movie service. The service is showing up everyplace: on TiVo boxes, on the Web, on Xbox Live, in Blu-Ray disk players. The company reported blowout Q4 earnings earlier this week and provided a strong Q1 outlook. Netflix has become a hot counter-cyclical, nesting-in-the-living room recession play; the stock has doubled since late November.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt thinks the rally has gotten a bit out of hand; he downgraded the shares this morning to Sell from Hold, asserting that fair value is about $28, or well below the current level.

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TiVo (TIVO) shares are down sharply late this afternoon, apparently on investor disappointment that the judge overseeing the company’s patent-infringement case against Dish Network (DISH) did not issue a ruling today in a dispute over whether DISH had violated an injunction issued earlier this year after the company had been found to be in violation of two TiVo patents.

Dow Jones Newswires reports that the two companies were in court today for a hearing on the issue. The wire service story notes that there was no decision today; ergo, DISH can (at least for now) continue to distribute the DVRs that are at the heart of the patent suit. TiVo has been asserting that the workaround for the patents in question that DISH has developed does not cure the patent infringement.

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The MPAA has offered a deal to the Federal Communications Commission that could bring movies to cable and satellite viewers more quickly after their original release. The trade-off, though, is that the movies couldn’t be viewed by some high-definition TVs, nor could they be recorded by stand-alone TiVos.

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This week, the television upfronts–in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers–will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers? That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings.

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With technologies like TiVo and text messaging taking over the world, marketers are being forced to rethink their approach to advertising.

The New York Times writes that NBC is hearkening back to its roots by moving beyond the 30-second commercial to form bigger, longer-term relationships with advertisers.

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When a casual session with reporters following his appearance at the NBA Tech Summit turned to a la carte pricing and set-top box limitations, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin offered his usual example of what’s wrong: cable. But when he was reminded–OK, by me, since I have a DirecTV TiVo that’s functionally crippled–that cable isn’t alone when it comes to limiting services and access on set-tops or alone on programming prices, Martin insisted, “I’m not picking on cable. … Cable is the easiest analogy. You’re absolutely right; the same rules apply. Generically, our term is MVPD—multichannel video provider. It’s not just cable, it’s also satellite or telephone companies, whoever’s providing your multichannel video services. All these rules should be the same for all of them. … These are the rules that apply to everyone.” He also talked about the 700-MHz auction, bandwidth management, a la carte, competition and Sirius-XM.

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