Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Granted PVR Patents
mnip sent in a Reuters story about TiVo getting patents on its digital television recording technology (also see their press release). Here's one of them - recording one program while watching another.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
You have a strange notion of "non-obvious". I would be willing to be anyone who has actually used a TiVo would have found the whole idea "non-obvious". That's why it is so hard to describe to the ordinary consumer what the TiVo actually does. They keep getting stuck on this notion that it is "just a digital VCR". You can't really "get it" until you have used it for a while. I say that's non-obvious. Just because some techie thinks it is obvious does not make it so. If you ask me, a Colt revolver is pretty damn obvious (and there was plenty of prior art) but the inventor had no trouble getting his patent.
hey fuckwit, read the fucking patent
If you read the patent info CORRECTLY you'll notice that it's about recording one show while watching another show you've ALREADY RECORDED. I Seriously doubt your father was doing that with a VCR.
When reading patents, you have to read the actual claims, not just the headings of the claims. The headings of the claims are necessarily obvious ideas; if it can be described in a line or two, it's probably obvious. What is important is the described process (in this sort of patent), not the result. For example:
1. A method for getting to my friend's house:
Go down this street, turn left, cut through the park, staying on the path because people walk their dogs in the park, go down the dead-end street, slip though the hole in the fence, and turn right.
Such a patent would only apply to the method, which is somewhat clever, and not to either the steps involved (which come be used by other people) or the end result (which could be done in other ways). As far as I can tell, TiVo's patent doesn't even apply to their direct competitor's product (I believe ReplayTV uses a different storage format), let alone prohibit the creation of devices that differ in other ways. Basically, you just can't build an exact clone of TiVo.
Actually - that would only be the case if the V3-3500TV and/or the All-In-Wonder had 2 tuners - so you could drop the feed from one into an mpeg-1, while watching the other...
My old Hauppage card does mpeg-1 recording, but it only has one tuner, so you have to watch the same thing you record. I'm trying to find out if they've put out dual-tuner cards capable of this - if they did, it *may* qualify as prior art, depending on how specific the implementation is.
Tivo's patent seems to be fairly specific on the process - feed->mpeg-1->seperate audio/video streams, etc... As long as they don't try to sue for infringement outside of that process, it'll probably be OK, but if they sue anyone who offers a record-while-watching-something-else product, regardless of the process, there could be trouble.
Odd...I got my card almost a year before that, and it comes with software that can record to mpeg-1. I'll see if I can dredge up the original CDs (don't have the Hauppage software on that comp anymore - it's linux-only - still works like a charm) and see if there's a date on 'em, or at least a version number. It's possible it was a prerelease version, as you mentioned.
This is not the same as having separate record and playback heads on one video head drum.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's called an MPEG video server, and they've been around for years in professional broadcast circles. And they can not only record an MPEG bitstream while playing others back, they can play at least 8 if not dozens of different mpeg streams back at the same time, or the same stream starting at 8 different times, or any combination of the above.
For that matter there were professional systems built out of computer controlled VTR decks ans switchers that could do the same thing using VIDEOTAPE, though it was inelegant and complicated and expensive.
Tivo is an inexpensive video server with VCR-like record functions. It's apparently a nice product, and I wish them well, but this patent should not have been granted.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
...or has noone else noticed the TiVO ad banners shouting "buy us -- we run Linux" being run in heavy rotation?
Sony doesn't own Tivo. Tivo is a publicly traded company. The following companies have invested in Tivo, (from Tivo's website) "America Online (AOL), Advance/Newhouse, CBS, Comcast Corporation, Cox Communications, DIRECTV, Discovery Communications, Encore Media Group, Liberty Media subsidiaries, Liberty Digital, NBC, Philips Electronics, Showtime Networks, SONY, TV Guide Interactive and The Walt Disney Company". As you can see, Sony is but one of a number of investors.
ReplayTV is a privately held company which is in the process of being acquired by Sonic Blue.
Tivo doesn't manufacture any units. They license their technology to others, most notably Sony and Philips.
ReplayTV had been manufacturing their own units but recently decided to switch to a licensing model as well. Panasonic is the only significant licensee I am aware of. They did recently sign an agreement with Motorola to incorporate Replay's technology in Motorola's cable set top boxes.
We need a moderation catagory of 'Clueless' for posts like the above.
Steve M
You are correct that you cannot watch one show while recording another with a VCR. So when stated like that it sounds rather innovative.
But if I state it as being able to write data to a hard drive while also reading other data from that hard drive it doesn't sound all that innovative any more.
Steve M
Will rocky and bullwinkle get out of this mess that boris and .. (rotflol)...
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
When you've got a patent, what is protected is not the description of the patent but the claim(s).
So this patent cover not just :
- "recording one program while watching another"
as stated on the"A process for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data, comprising the steps of:
- accepting television (TV) broadcast signals,
...
- tuning said TV signals to a specific program
- ...
- providing at least one Input Section, wherein said Input Section converts said specific program to an Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream for internal transfer and manipulation
- ...
- storing said video and audio components on a storage device
- ..."
multiple steps describing what is a Tivo, and not a VCR .The description are usually written to fool peoples. It is originally means to describe the object (the claims) of the patents to people so that they are easily understood. Not more !
#include "coucou.h"
Notice I said "in a certain way"
Again, it's a *specific* method of utilizing an MPEG coprocessor that apparently has some additional intelligence about circular audio / video buffers, indexing in the buffers, processing timestamp data from digital video feeds, and a bunch of other stuff that makes it a lot different (and likely better) that what your typical PC video encoder card is up to.
I'm not saying Tivo doesn't deserve the patent but what a lay person thinks when it comes to issuing a patent means squat. At least in theory considering the crap that is currently being issued nowadays in certain industries.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
This is not TiVO's fault. It is the cable company's fault. Isn't there supposed to be some sort of standard that would allow us to get whatever cable box we wanted and have it work with our cable system? Then companies like TiVO could have 'drop-in' tuners or reprogrammable ones for the box that would obviate the need of the cablebox itself. DirecTiVO is a TiVO and a dual tuner DSS box in one.
--Mike
For more info go to the AVS TiVO forum located here.
Ok, what country can I move to to avoid this kind of stupidity?! They go on to describe their "preferred embodiment of the invention", which is basically the same thing, but "TV streams are converted to an Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG)" format....
The US is way out of control!
On the humor side: Hey, someone just got a patent on the Time Warp! Look out RHPS!
Did your mother think of that?
Uncalled for.
I have a feeling that if Slashdot had been around when the mechanical adding machine had been invented, we would have been snickering about the abacus being prior art on the "adding two numbers" patent.
If the patent had stated that their claim was on "adding two numbers" and then gone on do describe the adding machine as a "preferred embodiment of the invention", then you're danrned tootin' I'd bee snickering (and complaining about the incompetence of the USPTO).
Now, if I'm reading this wrong, that's one thing, but the patent seems pretty clear to me: time warping is ours. TiVo is how we do it.
IANAL, but how else can one read that?
It's not like a VCR.Can you record a show and then watch some random portion of THE SAME SHOW while you are recording it? What if you want to fast forward or rewind while recording? Show me a VCR that can do that.
The only innovation here is that it's a piece of customer electronics. Rather than the sort of thing TV companies have had for a long time. Well over the 20 years a patent would cover.
Playing back something that's been digitally recorded while it's being recorded may be a new concept, but it's hardly non-obvious
It isn't a new concept. It's one method "live" broadcasts can use as a profanity delay.
Maybe not in exactly the same kind of encoding, maybe not aways digitally.
It's a question of where do you draw the line...
You are correct that you cannot watch one show while recording another with a VCR. So when stated like that it sounds rather innovative.
However it's rather trivial to do with 2 VCRs. Also there have been VCRs produced with 2 tape mechanisms in the same box.
What you're basically talking about is hardware MPEG handling, with DMA to the disk, so that the CPU doesn't have to get involved except for control processes. This isn't very novel, for example I dealt with a SEM with very similar characteristics. The CPU set up the scans, then retreived them from the disk, but didn't get involved apart from that.
The patent doesn't say you can't use a VCR. Or a TV card in your PC. I don't see any infringement here. Certainly nothing worse than HBO or, for that matter, your local cable company.
Best Slashdot Co
However, combining "time warping" with all of Tivo's other stuff is novel.
Novel ideas always build off of prexisting ideas. As such, patents should be and are considered novel even if they build off of previous patents.
--
Although the TiVo is new and arguably innovative, it only deserves 2 years of patent protection, because anyone else could have done it (including me, once I get old enough to have the resources to do so).
------
No it isn't. Different internals and different software. All of the TiVos are the same...Sony, Phillips, etc...but the UltimateTV is a different beast.
Every time we have a TiVo article there are many people that say "Big deal, my vid card does TV in!!!". I always feel the need to write this post.
/. crowd, it also runs Linux and they have released some of their work back to the community and supported them in their hacking efforts.... except for the video formatting, but that has been broken.
To those people: Go get a TiVo. The great thing about a TiVo isn't the fact it stores video on a hard disk. It's how wonderfully seamless the integration is to the rest of your system. I can't imagine watching TV without one now. My parents and my sister have them now and feel the same way. The interface is great and the featureset is almost everything you could want.
The price is right on target for a pre-built system that looks nice, works well, and isn't a hacked together PC sitting in my AV rack. There has also been a lot of work to hack these systems and make them even better. My main TiVo is an 87.5 hour unit.
And for the
Wow! Thank god we have innovators like TiVo around to come up with these brilliant "time warping" concepts. What a time saver!
Hey, this gives me an idea now. What if a computer could do more than one thing at once? I'll call it "multitasking". Imagine the convience of having a computer perform multiple tasks at the same time. I'll make millions! Now, where's that patent application....
----
---- I made the Kessel Run in under 11 parsecs.
Nowhere close to being true. UltimateTV is a direct competitor to TiVo's DirecTV product. UltimateTV is a joint venture of Microsoft and DirecTV. DirecTV is also a partner of TiVo. DirecTV wisely doesn't put all their eggs in one basket, but that certainly doesn't mean that MS and TiVo are on the same team.
But only when they deny microsoft entry into the market.
Hey, I wonder if Microsoft thinks software patents are so great now? I bet Ultimate TV (their tivo rip-off - what great innovation) can do the same thing. It would be nice if Tivo sued microsoft or was otherwise able to extract billions for the right to use this patent in its rip-off products.
I want to see Ultimate TV fail. The damned thing obviously only exists because microsoft feels threatened that another "OS" could penetrate the home market. Bastards. I dont want all my devices to be MS controlled!! Lets kill the 7 headed serpent. I'll take TV, you take PC's, you over there, take Video games, and divide the rest evenly among you the rest of you.
What does this mean for that Tivo-rip off product Microsoft is hawking that I've seen so many commercials for lately? It looks to me like these patents invalidate the whole product. Then again its not like M$ doesn't have the bucks to challenge them.
>The only way to do this with a computer is to have two tuner cards and a TV out card because it says the ability to watch one program on your television while recording another on in MPEG format.
Not even that easy. With TIVO, you can watch the program you are currently recording as well. Jump to live, back to the beginning, whatever.
The only way to do this with a computer is to have two tuner cards and a TV out card because it says the ability to watch one program on your television while recording another on in MPEG format. Plus it does it all with a neat interface and it kinda hidden to the user. I have yet to see a decent TV recorder using a computer that works well. I found webvcr the other day, and there's some commercial packages, but they don't let me watch something and record something else.
--
Free Mac Mini
--
Free Mac Mini
- granted in 1994! the first one that this is based off of is 1990! There's patents on paper bags, and other very very simple stuff.
Who cares anyway, it's DiVX ;-) a better format anyway for this type of application?
--
Free Mac Mini
--
Free Mac Mini
There's not much documentation online but I have a box full of paper docs that I have brought to the attention of Hughes in their fight against Gemstar's patents of on-screen TV guide displays. Perhaps it may be useful to refute at least a few of TiVo's claims, too...
--
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
A lot of people are saying that the patents were ok in this case since they didn't patent obvious things but I want to know what these peoples sources are before I can agree with them. After all if you read the yahoo! article it isn't very specific.
I'm not sure what TiVo is going to do with this egrevious patent, but I know what I'm going to do with mine.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The patent is fairly specific in regards to the actual recording process - in that the input stream is encoded to mpeg-1 - I'm not entirely sure, but I doubt VCRs used mpeg-1
You seem correct about the MPEG requirement; Apple, Microsoft, and Real could circumvent the patent by using their proprietary video encodings. From the patent:
This covers not only MPEG-1 but also MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (aka DivX ;-) )standards; infringing this patent requires infringing the patents on MPEG. To infringe a patent, you have to infringe one claim, but to infringe a claim, you must infringe every part of that claim. As all other claims refer back to claim 1 (and the nearly identical claim 32), a fellow could circumvent this patent by using a compression technology other than one created by MPEG, such as the Ogg Tarkin video compression technology that Xiph.org is developing.
And as diakka said, two tuner cards in one box (or even in one household) could by a reasonable stretch of the imagination be considered infringement.
The real question comes if Tivo tries to enforce their patent based on principle rather than process - claiming rights to ANY digital recording of one TV signal while watching another, regardless of medium or compression format used.You're referring to the "doctrine of equivalents," which was recently severely narrowed. The patent explicitly names MPEG, and it does not say "or any other media encoding technology."
(Of course, nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice.)Will I retire or break 10K?
This patent can't be valid since a VTR would be prior art. The mere fact that they use a particular recording scheme doesn't matter-- different VTRs have different data formats, some analog some digital, some even compressed digital. The mere fact they're using a disk instead of tape isn't important-- video disk recorders were used for years for things like still stores and instant playback at sporting events.
It's just not valid to say that their timeshifting is novel since they use MPEG and computer hard disks.
After reading all of the comments related to this story, I have, once again, come to the conclusion that all patent agencies should forward all incoming patent requests to /. for final approval.
/. moderator holding "REJECTED - please see attached comments" rubber stamp]
[insert picture of smiling
Blarf.
Agreed. It's great to see companies worthy of patents getting them. It is amazing though how the entertainment industry doesn't get it. They lost when they tried to prevent the sale of the VCR, back in the early 1980s. What made them think they could make the same content licensing infringement claims with regard to Tivo and UltimateTV? Will they never learn?
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Tivo is able to do what it does because a) it uses a multi-tasking OS (Linux), b) because it uses an MPEG chip that's capable of playing back and recording simultaneously (developed by IBM, I believe), c) because they can read and write to disk without monopolizing the CPU (DMA, using standard bus technology and IDE equipment.)
The only thing that they actually developed is the "feature" of being able to simultaneously play back and record. Given that I have been able to capture video to disk on a PC while viewing a different video file for several years now (using a capture board), I'm not sure how they can even claim that as an invention, much less a non-obvious one.
When you combine this requirement with all the other very specific stipulations the patent makes (must use MPEG, must separate audio and video, must have a little dancing TV-set as a logo), you might be able to come up with a unique product-- but not necessarily a novel, non-obvious invention.
Requiring a competitor to use another codec seems somewhat anti-competitive, considering that by using a standard like MPEG, Tivo reduces the cost of their encoders to about $14. To do the same thing in software, or with a different chip would probably cost significantly more. Separating audio and video is a fairly straightforward way to do things, and is the technique used by hundreds of pre-Tivo products.
Of course a competitor could work around the patent (at some expense), but I don't think it's reasonable for Tivo to combine a handful of standard practices (using MPEG, recording audio/video separately) and a couple of old ideas (time-shifting, schedule updates) and file such a broad patent on an entire product. Tivo is certainly welcome to file patents on the unique ideas they came up with-- and there are several-- but to patent the entire product is too much.
As I read the claims in the patent, it sounds like they are trying to cover anything that sends one channel to a "storage medium" while watching another channel. This would seem to include my old VCR combined with a TV -- start it recording, click TV/VCR, and pick the other channel on the TV tuner. Or just set a timed record to capture Buffy and Angel while I watch something else. The good news is, that's prior art even a jury can understand. The bad news, the patent will stand as far as recording to hard drive goes unless you can either find prior art using a hard drive, or convince a court that substituting a hard drive for a tape recorder is "obvious."
This isn't that bad of a patent, if you really read the thing. Yeah, it's a fairly simple idea, but no one's done it before (look carefully again at the convert to MPEG and then spilt part of the patent). The thing that pisses me off here is that many of the posts are "it's not a bad patent because we like our TiVo and they're l33t" - this shouldn't matter. If it's a crap patent (which this one isn't), then it shouldn't matter what the usage of it is.
Cue The Sun...
Oh. You mean they patented:
/dev/dumont
% receive | mpeg_decode | tee bab5.mpg >
...Blair
That's true, and it is also easy to fool oneself about whether one thought about something like that before the company did. However, in this particular instance, I had two other people describe the idea to me on separate occasions during brainstorming long before any of the PVRs ever made any press.
And it's not exactly particularly surprising that people come up with that idea when they have hardware sitting on their desk that can do this sort of thing out of the box, as many researchers at IBM, MIT, and other places did for many years. It's just that as long as that hardware costs $30000, you won't try to turn it into a consumer device.
In fact, hyperbole in place, everything that ever was invented or ever will be, would have eventually been thought of by someone else anyway,
True, too. However, people had been recording and playing back broadcast video digitally for years before TiVo came out. On reasonably well equipped workstations, you could even record and view multiple video streams simultaneously. What distinguishes TiVo is not some new capability but simply the fact that they defined a market niche for this product and entered the market with a consumer device roughly when disk storage prices and the availability of low-cost video compression chips made it feasible to do so.
I don't blame TiVo for filing these patents--they had to. Every startup does. But it's not an instance of innovative or far reaching thinking. To most people who have the hardware available to them, this is an obvious application, and the little tweaks you apply to make it more usable and convenient are standard engineering.
$ mpeg_capture live.mpg &
$ mpeg_play previously_recorded.mpg
Note that many high-end workstations were capable of doing that long before TiVo appeared on the scene. It's so obvious and trivial, why would anybody write it up? It only becomes an identifiable capability once you stick the whole thing into a box and call it a "consumer device". So, what exactly is the innovation there?
Don't get me wrong: I think TiVo is a pretty decent company that makes a pretty good product. I just don't think it's an example of breakthrough innovation: PVRs are here because disks and video compression have become cheap enough. TiVo had the business smarts to enter the market at the right time with a good product, and that's why they have been successful (but that's not something that ought to be patentable). Technologically, however, there is little that's surprising or unobvious about them.
That claim may be lengthy, but it seems pretty general.
It is really easy to take a look at a finished product and declare how anyone could have thought of it.
In fact, hyperbole in place, everything that ever was invented or ever will be, would have eventually been thought of by someone else anyway, so why bother granting intellectual protection to encourage the investment of thought/energy in the creative process.
______
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
If you read the patent it specifically mentions the use of MPEG as the recording format. VHS is definately not MPEG and thus would not fall under that. So I think as long as you did not use MPEG you would not be violating the patent. I still find this to be a rather broad patent which seems suspiciously aimed at stopping any competition to TiVo.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The patent is fairly specific in regards to the actual recording process - in that the input stream is encoded to mpeg-1 - I'm not entirely sure, but I doubt VCRs used mpeg-1 (although I've seen some VCRs that do a much worse job of recording, and some that do a much better job!)
The real question comes if Tivo tries to enforce their patent based on principle rather than process - claiming rights to ANY digital recording of one TV signal while watching another, regardless of medium or compression format used. That could become scary in the current legal climate in the US.
How many current TV cards (Hauppauge, etc...) are able to do this kind of encoding? How many of those can watch a second channel while you're recording from the first? I have an older Hauppauge card that can in fact do mpeg stream encoding, but it lacks the second tuner required to watch another channel. It wouldn't suprise me if one of the newer cards (from any company) had the second tuner - and if it predates Tivo's patent, that *could* be prior art, depending on the specifics.
In order to do that the VCR would need 2 video head drums so that the second could read what the first had just recorded. Either that or one horribly complicated video head drum with the tape wrapped completely around it.
When you watch what you record at the time that it's being recorded the video and audio signals are split into two streams, on of which goes to the audio and video heads, and the other of which goes out to the television.
A video head drum with a playback head right next to the record head (like three head audio recorders) would theoretically be possible (and maybe there are some high end commercial braodcast machines with them), but trying to build a VHS consumer deck with that would be an expensive technilogical nightmare.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The point is not 'is this inventive, does it deserve a patent'.
What you should be asking is, 'does it make sense for the government to grant 20-year monopolies on ideas such as this'? How much extra incentive does it provide to have patents available? Would nobody have come up with these techniques if they were not patentable? Does the impact on competition and the potential for creating legal quagmires outweigh the increased incentives to the developer?
(Do patents such as these increase incentives at all? Some might argue that software patents, on the whole, reduce the incentive to innovate because of the risk of being sued.)
The US constitution is quite explicit: the government _may_ grant patents on certain areas, to promote progress in science and the useful arts. Does granting patents on software and on techniques implemented with a computer promote progress?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
- Microsoft's "UltimateTV" does NOT use the TiVo service; it is a competing service.
- UltimateTV is ONLY available (at this time) integrated with a DirecTV receiver.
- "DirecTV Receivers with TiVo" (aka "DirecTivo" or "combo" boxes) compete in the same market as UltimateTV.
- TiVo also sells "standalone" units which work with any video source (including cable, satellite, broadcast, etc.) -- these units contain an MPEG encoder and have tunable quality settings to choose from.
- There is no UltimateTV product for the standalone market; DirecTV is required.
- UltimateTV and DirecTivo boxes BOTH lack MPEG encoder hardware; they can only store the MPEG signal coming from DirecTV's satellite.
- Because the MPEG signal comes from the satellite, the recordings are essentially PERFECT recording quality; the playback from a recorded program will be IDENTICAL to the quality of the live DirecTV signal. (Standalone TiVo units suffer variable degradation based on the quality settings and program material.)
- Because the MPEG signal was compressed by DirecTV before being sent to the satellite, there are no encoder quality settings to choose from, BUT the compression should be better than consumer-grade hardware can hope to achieve at the same bitrates.
- UTV has two physical DirecTV satellite tuners, which allows recording two shows at once or watching one show while recording another. This works today.
- DirecTivo combo boxes ALSO have two physical DirecTV satellite tuners, but only one can be used at the present time.
- All existing DirecTivo units will receive a free software upgrade ("sometime this summer") to enable the second tuner already present in the box. Until that time, UTV has a temporary dual-tuner advantage.
- For any dual-tuner system, two cable runs from a dual-LNB satellite dish for technical reasons; you cannot split a single cable to operate two satellite receivers.
- You can, however, "split" a PAIR of satellite cables using a "multiswitch" to connect more than two receivers/tuners to one dual-LNB satellite dish. (Two physical cable runs back to the dish will ALWAYS be required.)
- Since standalone TiVo units don't have dual tuners or dual MPEG encoders, they can only record one program at a time.
- Even with a single tuner, any TiVo or UTV box will allow you to record one program while watching a different program previously recorded. (This is somewhat like having two VCR's and no hassles with videotapes.)
- UltimateTV is based on the "Microsoft TV" platform, which uses Windows CE as the underlying operating system.
- TiVo is based on Linux as the underlying operating system. (Don't get your hopes up, the PVR functionality runs in a proprietary application on top of the Linux operating system.)
- Some TiVo users have been known to hack their systems, usually to add hard drives for additional storage capacity. (e.g. adding an 80GB drive to turn a "14-hour" unit into a "105-hour" unit) TiVo has been very gracious and accepting of this hacking, though of course it voids the warranty.
- UltimateTV has Internet access features (much like WebTV) that TiVo does not offer. However, many people question the importance/value of this.
- UltimateTV also has PIP (picture-in-picture) functionality, which is very important to some people and inconsequential to others.
- TiVo units do not have hardware support for PIP, and software support isn't likely -- none of the current models will ever have PIP capability.
- It doesn't help if your TV has PIP, unless you want to watch a different video source; current models only have one MPEG decoder so independent outputs aren't currently possible.
- TiVo is acknowledged as having the most advanced PVR software and has more sophisticated management features than UTV has.
- TiVo now has 200,000 subscribers, up from about 150,000 around the start of this year.
- TiVo has reduced their operating costs and revenue increased 48% (from $2.2M to $3.2M) between 2000 Q4 and 2001 Q1.
- TiVo remains in a negative cashflow situation. Although they expect to burn about $50M the rest of this year, they won't need outside funding until early next year. Positive cashflow is predicted to occur sometime next year.
- Microsoft, of course, has mountains of cash at their disposal.
- Despite this, UTV's impact on DirecTivo sales is "imperceptible" -- much of their advertising serves to sell people on the idea of a PVR, not necessarily their implementation. (And of course, UltimateTV probably helps standalone TiVo sales.)
- After dual-tuner support is released for the DirecTivo's, TiVo will have a clear overall advantage -- UTV will only be compelling to those who truly care about unique features like Internet access or PIP.
- There may be a few hundred thousand PVR's out there now, but a few hundred million TV's & VCR's. The potential market is enormous, but it's still in the early-adopter phase, probably for another year or two.
Does that clarify a few things?Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Has anyone hacked a TiVo and put in ethernet and made it work with their service? I would like to get one, but would rather not use my phoneline, when I have a perfectly good ethernet that is very close to the TV (pain to run the phone cable, but the cable modem and hub are right behind the TV ...).
The TV Guide channel has a patent on using irregular cells to display a TV schedule with shows of different lengths of time. I don't have the patent number handy, but when I was working for the Satellite TV Company, this was one of the patents we were going to have a problem with with the product I was working on.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So I guess my video capture card in my computer is a violation of their patent? I guess I'll have to get rid of it now.
What about Microsofts digital recorder? Is that a violation of this patent also? Maybe we could get Microsoft for patent infringement. Of course Microsoft allows you to record two programs at the same time, I wonder if Microsoft will be filing a patent for that now?
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
The patent for the "Multimedia time warping system" made me do quite the double-take. The first time you read it, it looks like a highly technical, restrictive patent on a non-obvious technology.
But that's where the double-take comes in. Look at the sorts of "restrictions" they're volunteering to put on their patent, so that it only covers their "non-obvious" technology:
User control commands are accepted and sent through the system. Watch out, you can fast-forward.
The video and audio components are stored on a storage device and when the program is requested for display, the video and audio components are extracted from the storage device and reassembled into an MPEG stream which is sent to a decoder. Damn, that's what my MPEG playback algorithm has been getting wrong-- I need to store my audio and video on a storage device! Damn, if they hadn't patented that bit, I would've stolen it.
The decoder converts the MPEG stream into TV output signals and delivers the TV output signals to a TV receiver. Those wizards at Tivo have done it again. Apparently, the secret to getting MPEG to play on TV is-- get this-- converting the MPEG stream into a TV-readable format.
The invention allows the user to store selected television broadcast programs while the user is simultaneously watching or reviewing another program. This, in fact, is a breakthrough. Have you ever tried to do this with your VCR? The instructions read something like: "During install, wall cord into first input, VCR cord from box to television. Then on watching, Input A the program watching, Input B the program being.". I don't know anyone who's ever done this-- they eventually gave up and watched TV upstairs.
It looks like the Patent Office, even if they have longer to review patents in the future, will run into the problem encountered in programming: it's easy to make a very complicated, confusing explanation for a very simple solution. Luckily for us (and, well, quite expensively for us), the courts have a lot more time to puzzle through all the bullshit.
I hope they're obeying the Multimedia Temporal Prime Directive.
Current implementations of Dishplayer and Ultimate TV, and Open TV (The new PVR from DISH networks), are not likely to be affected by this patent. While digital signals from a satellite are mentioned in the header of the patent, the specifics of the implementation do not infringe on the specifics of the patent. Dishplayer et al stream the digital signal to the hard drive directly and then stream the digital signal to the decryption (satellite) receiver. The TIVO patent specifically requires the "input section" to convert the TV stream into MPEG format. This conversion is never done by the Ultimate TV or Dishplayer products. A loose interpretation of the implementation could, very well infringe on streaming video products that use MPEG, such as real video, and media player. However, of course, IANAL and am probably wrong...
Well, I'm a big fan of TIVO. I've had one for about a year now and love it. I even bought a second one for my other televsion set.
But one thing I'm curious about: I just this week got an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder card. It's pretty nifty -- great TV receiver, pretty good graphics -- but it also has the 'TV-On-Demand' option: you can watch TV, pause it, skip past commercials, etc.
It even has (evil) Gemstar's GuidePlus software which makes the Radeon *very* much like the TIVO in that you can select shows in the future and have the Radeon record them as MPEG streams. (In fact, the Radeon has the added benefit -- along with some additional software -- of being able to serve up your TV across your LAN, which is quite nifty if yo actually need (or want) TV streaming across your home LAN.)
Anyway, I wonder if this new TIVO patent will put an end to one of the Radeon's AIW's big selling points: the ability to time-shift, encode, and then view time-shifted television files.
(The Radeon software isn't as quick as the TIVO software, but it does do essentially the same thing: encode while simultaneously allowing the file to be viewed.)
Ah well. I guess if the patent was gonna be awarded, I'd rather see TIVO get it than Microsoft.
I wish Slashdot would spend a little time in vetting the accuracy of it's stories.
Here's a clue: The title of a Patent is NOT the same thing as what the patent covers or claims.
In Slashdot's posting we have:
Here's one of them - recording one program while watching another.
What the patent really claims (which is far more limited and justifiable) is this:
What is claimed is:
1. A process for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data, comprising the steps of:
accepting television (TV) broadcast signals, wherein said TV signals are based on a multitude of standards, including, but not limited to, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) broadcast, PAL broadcast, satellite transmission, DSS, DBS, or ATSC;
tuning said TV signals to a specific program;
providing at least one Input Section, wherein said Input Section converts said specific program to an Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream for internal transfer and manipulation;
providing a Media Switch, wherein said Media Switch parses said MPEG stream, said MPEG stream is separated into its video and audio components;
storing said video and audio components on a storage device;
providing at least one Output Section, wherein said Output Section extracts said video and audio components from said storage device;
wherein said Output Section assembles said video and audio components into an MPEG stream;
wherein said Output Section sends said MPEG stream to a decoder;
wherein said decoder converts said MPEG stream into TV output signals;
wherein said decoder delivers said TV output signals to a TV receiver; and
accepting control commands from a user, wherein said control commands are sent through the system and affect the flow of said MPEG stream.
Tivo is obviously not patenting what they're doing, but how they're doing it. Everyone knows that VCRs have done roughly the same thing as Tivo for years -- but the innovative ways in which Tivo can do these things have revolutionized video playback, causing many a Slashdotter to go out and buy one (or want to).
The parser and event buffer decouple the CPU from having to parse the MPEG stream and from the real time nature of the data streams which allows for slower CPU and bus speeds and translate to lower system costs.
Did your mother think of that? I have a feeling that if Slashdot had been around when the mechanical adding machine had been invented, we would have been snickering about the abacus being prior art on the "adding two numbers" patent.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
After you read one, or both, of them, reflect on the "obviousness" of pencils and paperclips.
Best Slashdot Co
The fact that they got the patent isn't bad. Heck, they may very well deserve it because someone came up with the PVR concept (which does differ from plain VCRs as long as it takes into account manipulating live TV). Whether or not it was Tivo, well, we'll leave that to any prior art claims.
The real question is what is Tivo going to do with this new patent? Their press release really didn't say anything about whether they planned to start suing ReplayTV, MS UltimateTV, etc. If they're just going to add it to their portfolio and use it for negotiating power when doing deals (a lot of times big companies will do this without actually forcing everyone to license the patent), then more power to them. But if they're going to start attacking the other players, it could really harm the PVR market.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
While generally I'm opposed to software patents, the TiVo is really a pretty novel invention and probably has some areas where it's genuinely unique, so my general thought is "this doesn't sound so bad."
/. may sound eggrigious from the title, but when I read it I thought it sounded fairly specific - it talks about that the stream is encoded with MPEG specifically, and that audio and video data is separated, and specific functions the unit must be able to perform with the data, and what controls are on the remote. I immediately saw other ways the same functionality could be achieved without infringing on the patent (such as licensing the Sorenson encoder, or not separating video and audio data) - I'm sure any good programmer would as well, and someone specializing in that industry can come up with much better methods to avoid infringement.
The patent linked to on the article header here on
So what I want to know is, what are the other patents like, and what is TiVo going to do with the patents?
TiVo's success wasn't about a great idea. Lots of people had the same idea. Cheap digital video compression technology and harddisks just made it feasible to turn that idea into a consumer product at a certain point in time. TiVo's success was about timing, about lining up investment and going to market at roughly the right point. And a lot of their patents sound to me like stuff any reasonable engineer would come up with as a natural part of designing a PVR, without any significant thought.
See - the patent system isn't all bad :)
We would have TiVo-like devices with or without TiVo: the idea is pretty obvious. Without TiVo or some other company pushing consumer hardware early on, this would probably have started a couple of years later, first as software and hardware add-ons to PCs, Macs, and Linux machines.
Perhaps they can even get some money out of Microsoft for ripping them off with their Ultimate TV.
I don't see any rip-off. And they will be after you when you try to do similar kinds of things with your GPL'ed video recording software on Linux.
By granting these kinds of patents, the PTO risks that for the next 20 years, it could be mainly TiVo that controls this market, without being forced to innovate further. Soon, it will be cheaper to build TiVo-like devices than to build VCRs, yet if TiVo's patents turn out to be broad enough, they can keep the prices and profit margins high.
I think this is actually a good example for why patent life times should be shortened. TiVo should manage to make a tidy profit on their patents in five years. It makes little sense to grant them an artificial monopoly beyond that, no matter whether their patents are sensible or not, and doing so deprives the public of further innovation, in contradiction to the foundations of the patent system.
Of course, since there is so little that is worth recording on TV, it's probably pointless to get very upset about this.
2. The primary gist seems to be the use of a MPEG-specific coprocessor in a certain way that unloads the main CPU from having to do any video encoding / decoding work. IANAL but this does not seem to cover PVR functionality implemented in a PC, given the way most videocards are implemented.
And this is judged creative enought to be granted a patend ??
Sorry, but isn't this *exactly* what MPEG-specific coprocessors are designed for ???
--
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I can already hear the flamethrowers warming up from people who haven't bothered to read the press release or the patent filing. In an attempt to head off what will undoubtably be some common misconceptions:
1. The patent does not cover timeshifting- it covers a specific implementation of timeshifting. They reference use of VCRs and hard-disk based video recording systems in the prior-art section.
2. The primary gist seems to be the use of a MPEG-specific coprocessor in a certain way that unloads the main CPU from having to do any video encoding / decoding work. IANAL but this does not seem to cover PVR functionality implemented in a PC, given the way most videocards are implemented.
3. There's a lot of other stuff in there about refinements to the technique- sniffing out program start / stop info by scanning closed captioning information, and so on. Seems legitimately innovative to me.
Of course, if you believe the whole patent system is bunk all of this is irrelevant, but it doesn't look like anything to freak out about. However, it does reference a previous patent on hard-drive video recording dating back to 1994 that might be more troublesome... but I haven't read it.
--Scott D. Iekel-Johnson
Type something, will you? We're paying for this stuff!
"The Patents cover a METHOD for recording one program while playing back another"
It is obvious that TiVo have patented the act of recording one programme whilst watching another by whatever processes go on within their box, rather than the whole concept of it.
Suggesting the former is just a good way of getting your submission noticed, and causing rampant hysteria in the forums...
TiVo managed to come up with an innovative product that plenty of people (especially here) have found to be extremely useful and worth the price. As such, they deserve to have their advances in technology formally protected, and they have.
See - the patent system isn't all bad :) With all the whinging about one-click patents, we forget that every month, hundreds of patents are granted for worthwhile products, ensuring that research and development continue to thrive.