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TiVo Issued Additional DVR patents

Posted by timothy on from the patenting-1s-and-0s dept.

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."

3 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah but... by DutchSter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  2. Ugh, I hope this doesn't ruin Tivo. by reaper20 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. How does this affect PC's? by alen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?