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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.
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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 ...).
But the patent is much broader than that, and what is claimed in the patent is obvious. Please read the patent text in detail, and you'll agree that anyone who wants to implement a PVR device in clean room conditions (i.e. without prior knowledge of the current TIVO implementation) would have a good chance to come up with a system that would violate the patent. For me that makes the patent claim, by definition, obvious and thus unjustified.
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..."
The goal of patents is to promote innovation, to make innovation worthwhile. Anything that is due to be implemented by combination of known elements in an obvious way, such as what TIVO does, doesn't need to be promoted by definition, and thus doesn't need nor deserve patent protection. Otherwise patents stifle innovation (because without competition there will be less incentive for further improvements) rather than promote it.
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.