Right, that's it. I'm moving to the far east. Not only do you get Kitano Takeshi, sake in the supermarket and city-wide WiFi, but you also get to watch TV on Skype.

This innovation comes courtesy of Japanese company Novac, whose TV for Skype Anywhere (I think that's what it says) USB stick turns your home TV signal into a digital feed that you can watch via Skype from anywhere in the world. And all for for ¥9,800 - under fifty quid.

"The USB plugs into your home PC, and at the other end there's a socket for your TV aerial," says James Peck, from Skype's hardware team. "Then when you're on the road you call your home PC, which is reading from the aerial and converting the TV signal to a Skype digital call." Who needs boring old human beings when you can chat with your telly instead?

You can even change channels using your Skype messaging window. "So if I just type '#4#', the channel will go to Four and I can watch Big Brother." Ahh, modern life is bliss.

Of course, as with Taipei's WiFi Skype mobiles, what I really want to know is when TV-on-Skype will be available in the UK. But no-one's telling.

"They've launched it, we've had a look at it, and we think it's really cool," James told me. "It's working fine in Japan, but there's a little bit more work to be done before we can get it in the UK."

When pressed, James wouldn't give the precise nature or timescale of this little bit of work. However, given recent mutterings from broadcasters and advertisers about the profit-bothering nature of PVRs and IPTV, it may be that the networks aren't yet playing ball.

I can confirm that the Novac gizmo is, indeed, working just fine - because I've had a go. OK so it was a 10-minute demo, and I didn't understand a word that those Japanese golfers were saying, but it worked a treat - even though I was watching a digitised feed of live analogue TV, beamed all the way from Tokyo to east London. The Novac device is also one heck of a lot cheaper than remote home TV services from SlingBox or LocationFree TV.

Let's just hope it gets to see some UK retail action before too long. Watch this space.