TiVo nine lives not gone, wins Echostar lawsuit |
My old lil buddy TiVo, whom I still believe is destined to be gobbled up by a bigger fish for its technology, just won a major legal victory against Echostar along with $73 million. Furthermore, the’ve cut some nice deals for the future lately.
Separately, TiVo announced Wednesday that it has extended an agreement with its largest partner, satellite TV provider DirecTV Group Inc., for three more years. The $87 million request was based on a financial consultant’s estimate of how much TiVo would have earned if EchoStar had not sold more than 4 million of its own recorders using TiVo technology.
Despite some of my negative past writings about TiVO, particularly their stubborn and foolish use of ad skipping, I’m glad to see them win this lawsuit. They just seem like a Rocky story in the PVR business and though they took a beating from Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang and Ivan Drago, they just keep getting off the canvas. I still have yet to see anybody, including Microsoft, match TiVo’s recommendation engine but the competition is closing.
This news caused a 20% surge in their stock. Give ‘em hell, TiVo guy.
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Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #3: Calendars, academics, hybrids and butt equations — April 16, 2006 @ 11:27 pm PST
For one thing, TiVO’s patent and Echostar’s technology differ in a number of ways. TiVO can’t possibly expect to patent the ability to record digital audio/video feed onto a hardrive and manipulate it, that technology has been around for awhile, preceeding TiVO. How the hell do you think video editing existed before this crappy little analog to digital conversion piece came around?
It goes against the American capitalist spirit. DirecTV is upset as it is losing a good amount of market base to Dish Network, whose signal is ALREADY in MPEG format, so their DVR’s differ greatly from TiVO’s patent parameters - namely that the actual box does the format conversion. And do TiVO and, namely in the background, DirecTV, REALLY think that this move to monopolize technology will stick? Seriously? In this day and age? Suck it up and come up with something better. Competition provides for advances and progress in technology, explaining why Echostar/DishNet’s DVR quality whips TiVO’s ass.
Comment by Bun — August 19, 2006 @ 11:18 am PST