Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Issued Additional DVR patents
LoadStar writes: "In the never ending war of the DVR's (originally covered by slashdot here (1) and here (2)), TiVo was granted 2
more patents today -- they cover TiVo's 'trick play' features -- 'pause live TV as well
as rewind, fast forward, play, play faster, play slower, and play in reverse' -- all the
features that make a DVR a DVR. Interestingly enough, TiVo also patented 'a simple and
reliable method for connecting TiVo DVRs and other streaming media devices to a network
in the home,' a feature that to my knowlege does not currently exist in TiVo products
without serious hacking. In related news,
SonicBlue announced it would start licensing talks with TiVo,
probably believing that the last set of patents granted to them gave them the ammunition
necessary to get TiVo to cave and pay a royalty."
.. we'd offer to share our knowledge with others to better the human race as a whole.. but who are we kidding?
"Everything we say and do is right." -a mooninite
it seems like lately, the news around here has been stuck on pause, with an occasional rewind or two thrown in for good measure.
-hemos.
I'm hemos., aka Jeff. Bates.. I help run this site, along with Rob. Malda.. I handle books, and generally posting storie
And on a related note, I hear that Microsoft's patent application for their "on" button technology was recently submitted....
With the licensing that TIVO is going to ram down every PVR makers throat, it is going to keep the prices of PVRs inflated for may years to come. The hardware and software (Linux) these machines hardly accounts for their current cost. Once I see a PVR cost a reasonable ammount for the hardware I am buying I might buy one. I will be cold and dead before I spend $400 for a 60gb hard drive, a RISC processor and a MPEG2 decoder.
~wally
If these guy had any sense they would do what has worked so well in other sectors. Share the patents with each-other, then use them to keep everybody else out. The one that pops into my mind is the strangle hold two companies had on lasik surgery for a while. That is why they used to cost 10k+ a year. It has been done before, and is being done all the time.
I think I should have gotten a patent on letting others watch TV. So any company hereafter that creates devices which let others watch TV must pay royalties to me, or I will sue their pants off.
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
What will likely happen in the licensing talks is that they'll (eventually) cross-license to get access to each other's patents - it happens all the time with 'mature' companies.
After all, a nice profitable duopoly is way better than a prolonged legal battle where the lawyers get everyone's money in the end.
Okay, so Tivo will license to Sonicblue in exchange for Sonicblue licensing to Tivo. So in the end, they'll reach a push because it's in both their best interests to establish this mutual licensing.
The problem though is that small players are going to be screwed because they will have to negotiate with and pay two seperate companies for the licensing rights to that technology. So we can expect that for the forseeable future we will only have Tivo, ReplayTV, and any other big players who can afford to pay the licenses (Microsoft, etc).
So why do we have patents again? I keep forgetting...
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In other news:
Budweiser patents a simple method of connecting storage devices to a personal computer or workstation.
- As timothy pointed out, TiVo don't have anything that does this
- Other things like ethernet webcams already do this
Don't companies ever check for prior art any more?Follow me
I have DISH Network as a satalite provider. I have a RealPlayer from them that has the same exact features and capabilites as a Tivo. My question is... is it possible to hack that box to have network connectivity? Purpose of this would be to view the recorded sessions over the network, prefferably a computer. If anyone has any ideas, please post.
This has already been covered both here and here.
sig?
In a world where it's take 'em or lose 'em, can they really be blamed? Often times products are mass patented like this, only to have reasonable licenses come out in the future to the makers (in this case PVR makers). The idea being that if you don't patent it now, someone else will and screw you out of everything.
;)
Why should you let someone else screw everyone when you can do it yourself
I can't say what company I am involved in, but we spend a large amount of our patent money purely on defensive applications. In the end, we don't plan to rape the general public to use it, but we would like to retain rights as the creator.
TiVo also patented 'a simple and reliable method for connecting TiVo DVRs and other streaming media devices to a network in the home,'
Wonder what Tridge has to say about this?
cat
Tivo is one of those companies that really knows how to hook in their subscribers into a community. For some reason, I don't mind sending Tivo my money. I hope that this doesn't end up being a legal battle that saps Tivo of $$$.
The Replay 4000 is an outstanding box, but for $99 I can get a 30 hour direcTivo and throw 2 120GB IDE drives in it and get ~230 hours of recording time. The war is over. Long live Tivo.
Are there currently any projects that are working on the software necessary to roll your own DVR?
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If this means that next-generation TiVo's will include a way to download shows via ethernet built-in, this is very good news.
if only because digital is rarely used for this simple purpose. These days, companies plaster the word "digital" onto everything but breakfast cereal (cross your fingers on that one). Yet few everyday gadgets actually harness the cut-and-paste nature of digital data.
Support Texas Troops use TXGoogle
A Tivo is nothing more than a dumbed down PC that's programmed for a single task. I wonder how this patent affects PC's with video capture hardware and software included?
TiVo came up with a great idea, had lots of people copying them, made a patent and won it. Now they are making money on their idea, work GREAT with the community (even allow the mods, and all the updates, they try and keep the mods in mind), and sell their service very inexpensively. And everyone is complaining?
I'm happy for TiVo (especially, because I'm a proud TiVo owner).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Sure, but it will cost you $250/hour...
cases, n'est-ce pas?
The vast majority of patent cases are fought between the small to mid-sized company against much larger entities. Patents are the vehicle by which small and mid-sized companies --like TiVo--can effectively compete on an equal playing field with their much larger, better capitalized competitors.
It is what drives venture money to support start ups for companies founded by dudes with big ideas, and without which, nobody would ever want to be first to market with a big-R&D project.
Behemoth Microsoft is the perpetual defendant, not plaintiff, in these cases. It is the agile, flexible, upstarts who tend to benefit from the patent system, not the monoliths.
How does a tiny company win entry into the "cross-licensing" wars? That's easy, build some serious incremental inventions that improve the technology, and draft your own patent application. Yes, the newly "big boys" will try, at first, to toss you about -- and yes, they will be able to keep you at bay for awhile. But remember, there will be two companies cross-licensing their patents one against each other. If your technology is any good, the one who deals with you first wins! This means that both have to deal with you and guess what? Your good technology generates opportunity and value.
This is what mid-sized Japanese companies did to American consumer electronics in the 70s through the 80s. You decide for yourself who had the edge, those with the foundation patents, or those with the new technologies covered by blocking patents?
Great companies, big and small can be players --ALWAYS-- if they have: (1) technology and (2) savvy. It is true that cheesy, non-technology contributing companies cannot freeload off of the work of those who went before them and compete against TiVo with only TiVo's technology. The benefit of rewarding people who productize and bring to us the PVR as these guys did far outweighs the social costs of the marginal markups.
TiVos are cheap -- very cheap compared to their value. And they are excellent products that have been far more savvy about and friendly to their hacker communities than other counterparts. They deserve all they can milk form this.
Seeing as once its paused, its no longer live.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
First off, please pardon my ignorance. I'm sure I'm wrong here somewhere, and this post is more of a question than a statement.
Couldn't some sort of antitrust or similar unfair business practices suit be brought against either of these companies for intentionally waiting until after a PVR market has built up to patent their "inventions", thereby creating a secondary business model for themselves that exploits their entire market? If either of these companies were legitimately patenting their "inventions", wouldn't they have filed their patents long before a market of similar products and businesses had sprung up?
And on another thought... can't these patents be easily overturned, anyway? There must be some reason why neither Atari, Mattel, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, or Microsoft has been able to successfully patent "a console system primarily used for playing proprietary gaming software".
Any lawyers here, by any chance? I vaguely remembered Slashdot having a few regular lawyers that sounded pretty credible.
Kinda makes me wonder if there are Microsoft Certified Patent Clerks out there.
well you are an old worn out cunt.
Let's see .. playing a media stream at varying speeds. In MPEG video, it's moderately complex to skip frames, but I would be surprised if it were not discussed in mpeg literature for use in systems which cannot decode the full stream in realtime, but must instead decode every Nth frame (N=2-4). Playing more slowly just involves showing a frame for more than one retrace. Any decent MPEG player should already have frameskip control, and wiring a timebase multiplier to a UI knob is not rocket science.
Playing and recording at the same time is a simple matter of having a multitasking OS, a disk fast enough to handle the bandwidth of two streams, and separate encoder/decoder hardware.
As for "connecting DVRs to a network in the home", DVRs are just another piece of network hardware. Streaming media technology is probably the subject of patents that precede DVRs. Besides, the hard parts of streaming are when bandwidth is scarse, which isn't the case over ethernet (2mbps wireless excepted)
Playing backwards is a little more complex than playing forward at variable rate, but again most DVD players have this capability. This patent has a April 1998 application date, but DVDs date to 1995 ("December 09, 1995: The final DVD format is originally announced.") Since DVDs are streams of video, the capabilities of DVDs to manipulate the order in which the stream is presented seem relevant. Surely "play in reverse" wasn't missing from DVD for their first two years of existence..
Other posters have discussed how SonicBlue and TiVO will probably cross-license, and the patents wouldn't stand up to scrutiny anyway, so the only thing they'll be good for is to raise the bar against additional participants in the DVR market (those who don't have deep-enough pokets to withstand a lawsuit, which means any startup...) and maybe to furnish C&D-letter fodder for OpenDVR software projects.
Hate stupid software on freshmeat? Laugh at
But the actual method that the TiVo developers used to accomplish this isn't. And that is what they are patenting.
And before anyone says that the method IS obvious, remember, in hindsight, everything's pretty obvious.
What about live broadcasts that have a 10 second delay built in to allow bleeping? Isn't that kind of the same thing? Perhaps I'm off in left field, but if it is, wouldn't there be a prior art case there?
FF/RW/Pause????? Has the guys at TiVo even looked at the UPnP A/V spec? It defines exactly that... And the TV is listed as a content directory, so FF/RW/Pause of Live-TV is already covered.
And connecting these devices together? Eh? Have they ever heard of UPnP? Heck, even 1394 lets you do that.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
just patent everything. fuck it.
If this is true, why do companies like IBM hold so many patents? In fact, IBM gets about a third of its revenue from patent royalties! And they're hardly alone at this game -- just the most successful.
Although patents can protect the little guy, that's not the way it usually happens. They just help the big get bigger, and give them a tool to pry inventions away from the little guys.
Anyone else notice Tivo's new strategy? First came an "Important Message" that you have to look at before accessing the menu. Previously, this meant announcements like the enabling of dual-tuners.
This last time, it was announcing a contest wherein if you watch Lexus ads, you can get entered into a contest to win a Lexus.
Now, they've started adding pre-taped video segments (filling up my hard drive, I assume) of BMW ads.
How soon before we're forced to watch TV show previews before we get to access the Now Playing List?
That's $250 promotional procing that's available for a 30 hour unit, and $199 for a 120G drive at Fry's.
It's Linux, and if they don't encourage hacking the units, they certainly tolerate it. Besides, it's cool to get a bash prompt on a piece of off-the-shelf equipment. Cooler still to support a company that uses Linux.
There's still the $10/month or $200 lifetime programming fee, but even so, it's worth it.
We've had ours for 18+ months and don't know what we'd do without it now. My folks are getting one (just the 30-hour version; we can always add a hard drive later) for Christmas.
Sure you could build something similar. But that'd be a lot of effort to save at most a couple hundred dollars and have a less polished result. I don't know about you, but it doesn't take much of my time to be able to justify the extra money involved. Especially when I want to relax and watch TV, not chase about inside gdb debugging why Friends caused a core dump.
Other than being in a neat and tidy consumer package I don't see a lot that Tivo or Replay do that hasn't been in a professional editing and presentation equiptment. At least when you look at the basics. Think Monday Night Football. Pause, Fast-Forward, Rewind, Slo-mo all in a tidy digital package. No comercial skip though.
Don't get me wrong, there may be some specific PVR functions both Tivo and Replay have valid patents for. But from the looks of things it will be a wash if they try to sue each other. Both companies would be better off entering into a cross lisencing agreement and let the better product/marketing win. Instead I can see Tivo and Replay tossing tons of subscriber money down the Toilet we call corporate law, thus depriving consumers of good R&D.
I realy do not have a problem with patents as long as they make sence and are awarded to a company that has a product that uses the patant (and it is the only one or one of a a small few.
I do not like patents awared for things that have become widly used in the industry, like the rambus SDRAM dispute or the oneclick crap.
Tivo being awarded the patens would be nice since they pioneered the industry.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
When I think "patent", images of patent drawings for drill bits are the first association that comes to mind for me... which is the product of a professor who had *scary* levels of experience in the oil industry, but which will serve as a good example in this case.
Patents for drill bits cover *implementation* ideas. Perhaps this patent isn't for a solid bit, but rather one that has three conical rotating parts on sleeve bearings. Perhaps that one isn't for a pure tungsten carbide surface, but rather one that uses tungsten carbide to hold diamond grains in place. Implementation details.
If anyone had tried to patent "getting oil out of the ground" instead, they would have been laughed to death. If you were a tool bit manufacturer, you licensed patented ideas because they were faster, cheaper, or more reliable, not because they were the only way to do the job.
So that's the first problem I have with software patents: they tend to patent the job, not just one way to do it. If your PVR idea uses a fast general purpose CPU instead of a specific MPEG encoder chip, if it uses MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2, or if it's not even a physical product but instead just a software package you run on your computer with tuner card... well, even if you don't resemble Tivo at all in implementation, you probably fall under their patents for just solving the same problem of "pausing live TV".
The second problem is that they're patenting the obvious. Given the question, "how would you make it possible to pause live TV", exactly what percentage of Slashdot readers do you think would be unable to figure it out? Implementing it would probably be beyond the reach of most of us... but if Tivo were patenting their implementation, I'd expect to see source code in the patent.
Tivo thought of a new market. That's a wonderful thing, but should they be allowed a 17-year monopoly in it because of it?
And watched them, but it was only to see more cool pictures of my car; I'm not going to rush out and buy another one, so the advertising part of that scheme wasn't that effective.
:)
The NFL promo stuff is what I object to taking up space on my machine.
But they did allow me to enable a better compression scheme before their stuff started collecting on my machine.
Do I like the direction this is headed? Not really. But at these levels, it's tolerable. It's not like I'm forced to watch an ad in order to view my recorded shows... or I can't fast-forward through certain ads...
And I guarantee what would happen in these instances is that I'd stop paying my $10/month and find an alternative source of programming information.
2 120 GB drives, AND a 30 hour direcTivo??? Sign me up!
I think you're totally negating the cost of the HD's there, bucko.
Hypothetically, that I go out and grab a couple of WinTV cards and a TV-Out card. I hack up some software that lets me tune, record while watching, pause and all that stuff that the Tivo does. None of it is really all that hard when you get right down to it. As far as I can tell, I can snarf the channel guide right off TVGuide.com too. Is anything I've done up to that point covered by these patents? How about when I release the software under the GPL?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Here in Austin we have this lovely pay-per-view service that lets you rent a movie for 2-3 days and watch it as much as you'd like. Rewind, pause, Fast Forward, it's all there. Unfortunately, I'd be willing to bet it infringes on either TiVo's patents or Sonic Blue's. At any rate, I imagine TW'll be taking them up on it quick enough. Their end goal is to allow you to have a TiVo at the headend rather than in your house, thus making them money for storage and service.
That I'm going to have to pay Tivo a royalty for connecting my Win 2k MP3 server to my network? Safter all, I have several "streaming media devices" attached to it.... Hmmmm...I wonder if the patent office has even heard or used --- what do they call it? Prior art? Frigging morons!
They're probably doing this because bankcruptcy is looming and they need to make some cash. They're probably not selling too many... $600 is a hell of a lot of money for something that 'pauses live tv' (for the life of me I can't imagine why I would want to do that). I asked what it could do for me and was amazed to be told it could only record off analogue channels... no digital, no satellite, no cable (to be fair most other videos have this problem, although at least they can play rental videos and cost $100).
Never heard of the Replay TV - they don't sell them around here. Hope it's a bit better (and a lot cheaper).
how many DVDs do you own where you can't skip the fscking Coke commercial before you watch the flick?
For all the patent wars, at least TIVO is nice about hacked products. In these troubled times, it is hard for me to come down hard on a company that has used such restrait toward hacking their product.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Now if Tivo only had a Real Time fast forward capability, I'd take up sports gambling as a profession.
Tivo doesn't make the patent rules, you (the voter) do. Unfortunately (for them) they still need to play by those rules, which don't favor small companies enough in most cases.
Far from raking in the dough, Tivo is keeping prices low, while losing money. (For the 3 months ended 10/31/2001, revenues were 5,342; after tax earnings were -33,838.)
You would be hard pressed to find a cheaper way of creating a tivo like system, of comparable performance, from commercially available parts. Jumpy video in the window of a crashing pc isn't the same.
Tivo is licensing, so development can and will continue!
The Tivo service has been very unobtrusive to me so far. I'd gladly watch 1 targeted commercial at my convenience a month to help them out.
I've always thought that the "Everything you ever wanted to know about product X channel" would be a great idea. It would be nice to be able to get a real professional sales video about all of the features of that new car that you might want to buy ON DEMAND. Tivo just figured out how to use the DEAD AIR in the middle of the night to make the cost of such a channel acceptable.
I want to be able to select something like:
Product Videos -> Cars -> BMW -> 325 -> (BMW, Car & Driver, Road & Track) and watch 3 videos on the new 325 series at my convenience. I win, BMW wins, and Tivo wins. What's the problem?
Same thing with vacation destinations, digital cameras, etc. Anything where a static page of info just isn't enough.
Do they work with Digital Cable being served up by the likes of AT+T and others?
TIA
XML causes global warming.
As long as all that stuff isn't stopping me from recording the shows I want...that's fine. However, for menus as deep as you're suggesting, it would work better for selecting the ad to be "downloaded" at some "available" time.
I could live with that, as I'd only be using disk space for the things I'd want to see (so long as my 6 year old doesn't get too happy with it).
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Anyone know when this technology is coming to Australia?
and do the cheap ones like Hughes (one of the $49) have *room* and connectors for a second HD?
hawkb
...that you still have to pay a monthly fee of $9.95 or a lifetime fee of $249.00.
This cost needs to be factored in to your price: $99.00 (TiVo) + $450.00 (2 120GB IDE drives at $225.00 as listed at www.pricewatch.com) + $250.00 (lifetime subscription) = $750.00
Yes, it's cheaper than a comparably priced ReplayTV 4000 box, but it's not as cheap as one might think.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Sorry, no.
Yes, but try
this.
$49, with 18" antenna and installation kit.
OK, what I want is a straight price for a pair of these, a multiswitch, and installation. There's a bit of this, and a bit of that, but I want a straight price for the bundle . . . and yes, I would want 2. We get no regular reception out here (this part of the state is *why* the state handed Penn State money and told them to develop cable). I either need a second unit of satellite, or a secdond receiver, for the kids room. As the price isn't very different, I may as well tivo it . . .
hawk
As a former tek employee, I can tell you most of these so-called patents have significant prior art developed for the Tektronix Profile system, now owned by the Grass Valley.
"Slow playback" ?? How the hell do you think all those slow-mo replays are done on Monday Night Football anyway? Sheez.
The network hack for Tivo does not work anymore along with many other hacks since the latest firware update. So fuggit aboud it.
Someone may make some sort of hacked flash prom that will allow your changes not to be overwritten, but not yet.
Looks like TiVo and SONICBlue will go to war over this, it's gonna be interesting: Yahoo News with the story.
I just wonder what the outcome will be. TiVo claims they have patents that cover all the DVR functions, and SONICBlue claims they now have the DVR patents they need for the DVR functions. Each side claims licensing is going to give them a big revenue push. Just a guess, they are expecting the otherside to bow down and license the technology from them.
-s
My ultimate AV Component. I'm shoving a Radeon All In Wonder in a black atx desktop with a 60 GB HD and a regionless DVD. I'll just put it in an illegal DDR P4 board, add decss, emulators, some roms, stuff it full of contraband mp3's, and maybe load up devils 0wn for the hell of it. I'll plug it into my TV and my speakers and plug it into my other computer's extra network card for software routering. I'll use the Visor I bought for school as a remote. I'm sick of people trying to squeeze money out of me and telling me what I can and cannot do with my hardware and time. I didn't log on at 300 baud on a used 386 to K-Rad WWIV BBSes to be putting up with this crap years later. I may still be poor, but now I'm crafty.
Subcomandante Torta
I love these things, I can now watch the spice channel the way I want it. A girl goes down on another girl SLOW! A guy unzips his pants FAST FORWARD! CowboyNeal takes off his pants, REPLAY!
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58.0% slashdot corrupt
They didn't even have to think of a way to pause, play, ff, rewind, etc. If they would use MPEG-2 as he digital stream, they would be able to use the capabilities already in the protocol. I would say that the "patent" for these capabilities on any stream, digital or analog, is already in the public domain and is "non-patentable". I don't know how they got a patent for these basic features. I agree that if they have an implemenation, this should be in the patent, not the feature itself. Well, government stupidity like this is nothing new since many communication things are now digital. It seems that they cannot deal with this type of networking.
I don't remember having an option to vote on patent laws. Did I miss something?? Oh, that's what the dog was chewing on.
Patents are intended to provide an implementor of an idea with away of claiming his rights as the first to implement it.
What's this Submit thingy do?
One way to make the system better is that for a 6 month period after a patent is officially issued, permit people to submit evidence of prior art. After the 6 month period, the prior art submissions would be reviewed by a commitee at the patent office for validity, rendering a decision of the patent's validity shortly thereafter.
The problem is that there currently exists no review process other than filing a lawsuit. That's expensive, potentially very protracted, and slanted in favor of those who can afford the biggest legal teams.
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