A short while ago, TiVo (TIVO) and EchoStar (DISH) announced initiatives to enter the portable media market, enabling their customers to download video files onto their PCs and portable devices. Now satellite TV company DirecTV (DTV) is joining them — Engadget reports:

DirecTV has a new partnership in the wings that will help get your recordings off of your DVR and into the wild land of computers and PMPs [personal media players]. We should have more info at CES, such as devices and who they’ve partnered with to make the magic happen…

Blogger Zatz adds the consumer’s perspective: ‘There’s strength in numbers - the more companies that provide us with tools to legally copy and playback free content and content we’ve already paid for, the better. Hopefully a large player like DirecTV will dissuade studios and networks from attempting to block these services now that they’ve found a temporary market to sell shows.’

As with TiVo’s project, it’s a net positive for DTV and Apple, who stands to profit from a wealth of unfettered video content driving sales of the video-enabled iPod. But the TV networks aren’t going to be thrilled about this development. As Zatz says, they may not be able to fight it any longer, but they haven’t figured out a compelling strategy to monetize the trend either.

DTV 1-yr chart: