Slashdot Mirror
Sonicblue Acquires ReplayTV
rakeshagrawal writes: "This article reports that Sonicblue is buying ReplayTV. It's an interesting step in Sonicblue's transformation. They have quite an array of media devices/software items ranging from audio products, web tablets, home networking and now video. And as for ReplayTV and the PVR industry it means that TiVo may may have even less competition now ... WebNoize has another very interesting article on the acquisition and SonicBlue's overall strategy, but it's a subscriber-only thing :(" (Quick note to WebNoize -- wouldn't you like more people to read this?)
So, as someone already pointed out, Sonicblue != Diamond. S3 bought diamond, took over the rio division, and pretty much killed the graphic and sound card division. fyi.
Ummm...Quantum didn't buy Maxtor.
7 27 .html
Maxtor merged with Quantum's Hard Disk Unitand all your Quantum (HDD) stock became Maxtor stock.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/13
"The world's biggest hard disk drive company is to be created, through the takeover of Quantum's HDD business by Maxtor.
Constructed as a merger, the all-share transaction will see Quantun's HDD stockholders receive 1.52 shares of Maxtor common stock for every one share they hold in Quantum. This values the deal at $2.3 billion.
The enlarged business, to be named Maxtor
Corporation, produces more than 50 million hard drives a year."
Before buying my TiVo I did some research. I asked a friend with the 7200 and he told me it was fairly unreliable, losing signal far more offen then his other recievers, and having it stay lost for a time, or locking up for no reason. He said a bunch of other bad things as well, but I don't recall them in any detail. As he reads slashdot, maybe he will come to my aid :-)
One of the Charlie Chats with the tech people there were a lot of comments about how many people were having trubble with the 7200. That is a pretty big admition from the folks that were selling the thing, so I can only assume it was pretty buggy, or had a pretty nasty UI.
DISH also is coming out with a new PVR, so I think they didn't like the 7200.
I also noticed this in another forum:
As far as TiVo goes you get the extra 40 minutes by havign asked for that show, or a session pass ("all the shows with that name on that chanel"), the only way you get screwed is if you made a manual recording for a specific time range, and in that case I can't blame the thing.
I rejected the Replay because they have an anti-hacking stance, and I didn't like their record paradime, oh and I heard about bugs on (I think) the Panosonic with macrovision.
I rejeted the DirecTiVo because it only records stuff off of DirecTV, no off-air signals, and no WB. I'm not going to pay a ton of money to not watch Buffy :-)
I was pretty leary of the Stand-Alone TiVo just because I'm not thrilled with taking a nice MPEG2 signal, and needlessly turning it into NTSC, and running it through a lower quality MPEG2 codec. But it seemed the least bad, and I got it. I have been quite happy with it. More so then my DVD player.
It was debatable whether Diamond had any tech support to begin with.
*clap* *clap* *clap* funniest thing I've read all day, but then I'm writing a research paper...
Sonicblue is made out of people!
However to reduce expenses, it has slashed its workforce by 400 employees, or 40 percent.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
The press release at Sonicblue's site is here.
hmmmm - I wonder how the media moguls will mess with this. There have been a number of articles here and elsewhere trecently about digital coding to prevent recording of specified media events, etc.
Remember, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they are NOT out to get you.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If this is the best name the ad guys could come up with they should ask for a refund.
I can hear the nicknames now, "Sonic Shoe", "Cronic Flu" etc, and the ever favorite for the former "lack of tech support dept" at Diamond/S3:
Sonic Screw
Well, with Microsoft's second PVR (the buggy DISHPlayer7000 being their first) coming to market this year TiVo has a bit of competition on it's hands still...
Yes, I know UltimateTV isn't for sale yet, but competing with Microsoft's vapor-releases is harder then competing with it's real products!
While I don't know what TiVo's offical responce to UTV is, I like to imagine it is stright out of their comercials "Bring it on fat boy!"....
Since Slashdot rejected the story, not too many people know that SonicBlue also owns empeg. Just imagine what kinds of on demand video and audio products could come out of SonicBlue now...
They also bought Sensory Science.
Interesting indeed.
I expect next Xmas there will be a lot of these in the stores.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
After buying a video card from Diamond and repeatedly getting shafted by their tech support (first they said they didn't support AMD, then later they said that they didn't feel like supporting my video card anymore), I will not have anything to do with this company if I can help it. Maybe this is off topic, but I feel like I must say it.
(Quick note to WebNoize -- wouldn't you like more people to read this?)
:)
Or more importantly, wouldn't you like to show banner ads to 300,000 people in one day?
Their loss
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Let me give you the lowdown