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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."
The hardware isn't the cost, the software is.
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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Just to be fair, TIVO is just the latest PVR company to get some patents issued. ReplayTv also had a set of patents (ok, maybe only 1) issued a few weeks ago.
/. readers, the UI of something doesn't matter (have you seen the UI on most open source projects?), it is important for mass appeal (so even my grandmother could use it). And there is some cost associated there.
And don't forget that your $400 also covers the software to control the thing. While for most
Bah, damn hardware people always think that software comes for free and that the hardware is the only real cost.
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.
Guys,
Circuit City has been selling the Sony and Philips Directivo's for $99!!
These things ARE cheap.
Don't forget the MPEG-2 encoder (for standalone units) and the modem. And the control software.
And remember, TIVO really has very little to do with the hardware (besides maybe specification). They are really a software company. They wrote the software that controls all that hardware, and let other people (Sony, Phillips, etc.) build the hardware. I'm sure TIVO wishes they could get the hardware price down as well, but I don't think they have quite enough volume yet to convince those HW manufacturers to take a smaller profit margin.
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?
In what world? I just bought the Phillips for essentially retail, because they were charging an Arm and a leg for the Sony. If you can give me a cite or a link, I can get some of those yankee bucks back. PLEASE, if there is a $90 Tivo out there at Circuit City or a competitor, post it by all means.
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!
Check out The Tivo forums. There is alot of information there.
Its a Directivo, and there are some issues. Mine came with a "defective" remote, that Philips replaced in about a week.
I basically walked in to a Circuit City, scoped them out, and found out about the price. I am already a DirecTV subscriber, so that wasn't an issue. New subs get a free installation.
Three nights later I'm 'taping' Dolby Digital 5.1 movies from Starz East. Heh.
PLEASE, if there is a $90 Tivo out there at Circuit City or a competitor, post it by all means.
TiVo's Special Offers page has numerous units ranging from $49.99 (for new DirecTV subscribers--or $79.99 for existing subscribers) to $299.99.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
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.
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.
I just bought the Hughes Directv Tivo box from Circuit Shitty. $94. Personally, I am paying the $10/month for the Tivo service because I like it.
Remote kinda sucks but the functionality of the unit rules. Plugged the optical TOS Link into the stereo and now I am watching movies in Dolby Digital. Really nice unit.
Go to www.circuitcity.com and search for "GXCEBOTD".
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.
As much as some software may exist to do this on your own PC, TiVo's software is extremely advanced. The number of features that the TiVo software can provide would require numerous man-months of development on your own time should you wish to throw together a $150 unit.
For starters, there's the software to download scheduling information, the software to present said information visually, the elements which allow you to automatically record shows based on cast members, directors, keywords, or any other item included in that schedule information; components that take care of the timed recording of scheduled (and sometimes unscheduled) shows, the components which allow you to watch a program and record up to two others simultaneously (with DirecTiVo).
Were I to develop the software to do everything that my TiVo can on the PC sitting in my closet, I'd probably dedicate a good 9-18 months perfecting it.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Actually, it's highly likely that both TiVo and SonicBlue are patenting everything can as a defensive tactic as much as they are doing it as a revenue source. Essentially, in cases like this, the players wind up cross-licensing each others' patents for nothing (or nearly nothing). It's only when somebody new tries to enter the market and has no patents to trade, that the patent holders actually see any income from their patents.
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?
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.
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?
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?
TiVo also patented 'a simple and reliable method for connecting TiVo DVRs and other streaming media devices to a network in the home,'
Other things like ethernet webcams already do this
Show me one ethernet webcam that connects TiVo DVRs to a network.
- I'm sure TIVO wishes they could get the hardware price down as well, but I don't think they have quite enough volume yet to convince those HW manufacturers to take a smaller profit margin.
TiVo is in the hardware business in about the same way as nVidia is in the hardware business. TiVo creates the reference designs and the software, then contracts the work out to 3rd parties. TiVo even grants subsidies to its hardware manufacturers to keep the price of the units as low as they are. TiVo actually loses money on the sale of its PVRs, expecting to recoup the losses in subscriptions.TiVo has introduced a new form factor with the DirecTiVos and the new AT&TiVo box that is being sold through AT&T Broadband. This new form factor is much cheaper to produce. Consequently, you can find DirecTiVos for under $100, sometimes less than $50. The AT&TiVo box is still around $300 for a 40-hour, but this is still quite a bit cheaper than what you would pay for a 40-hour standalone under the old form factor. The new box also has USB ports, so future networking upgrades are a (although somewhat distant) possibility.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
There was a special version that was made for Direct TV.
Now if Tivo only had a Real Time fast forward capability, I'd take up sports gambling as a profession.
I think as long as you aren't promoting it and selling your new product you'd be fine.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
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.
Now, they've started adding pre-taped video segments (filling up my hard drive, I assume) of BMW ads.
Those ads use space that was already set aside by TiVo. They do not use up any space that you could use.
no they do not.
The tvio has the svideo and video jacks on the back disabled. so you cannot get the quality signal.
also, the TiVo block the PPV channels (it cant recieved the digital channels either, so anything on espn2 or mtv2 cannot be recorded.
Motorola has the DCT7000 coming out soon, making the TiVo useless to AT&T customers (as the DCT will have a tvio-type device in it.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
and do the cheap ones like Hughes (one of the $49) have *room* and connectors for a second HD?
hawkb
Why would this even be an option for you? Do what every other self-respecting geek does and find a discontinued or refurbed one for about 90-150$US.
You *ARE* just going to take the thing apart the minute you get it, right??
Since you are going to hack it, it doesn't matter that you get the latest/greatest. You will void the warranty anyway, so it doesn't matter. Just fire it up once to test it, then slap 2 100GB HD inside of it, add a NIC, and whatever else you feel like fiddling with, and you have a cheap solution.
(The only thing that adds to the cost are the HD's, but you would have bought those anyway. Or slap the new HDs in your computer and swap/use the older drives in the TiVo.)
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
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.
Sure they do. Your digital cable box will have A/V outputs, and the Tivo has A/V inputs. With a digital cable system the Tivo's own tuner wouldn't work, or at least wouldn't let you get all the channels.
The tvio has the svideo and video jacks on the back disabled. so you cannot get the quality signal
I just helped a friend set up his Tivo with ATT digital cable. His unit is using the RCA A/V input jacks with no problem.
I have never heard of a Tivo that disabled the S-video input either.
also, the TiVo block the PPV channels (it cant recieved the digital channels either, so anything on espn2 or mtv2 cannot be recorded.
All irrelevant if you use the A/V inputs, which do work, I assure you.
(It doesn't block PPV channels... it may not be able to decode them with its tuner but it doesn't do any kind of blocking.)
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
Can't patents be overturned? Pardon my ignorance, but I thought that if prior art can be found a lawsuit can get the patent overturned.
Because doing this is very time consuming and expensive. Especially when you consider that people are taking a "shotgun" approach to filing patents and the USPO effectivly appears to be rubber stamping the applications.
So you wouldn't have one lawsuit you'd have 10, 50, 100, etc...
Interesting as there are specific hacks available that you have to do to enable those ports.
my TiVo cannot record from them and there are sites that sell hacked tivos that enable that.
what model number is your friends? I wonder if the new ones are now coming with it enabled.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't know the model number but it is a Philips 30 hour unit.
I haven't specifically tested the SVHS input because the digital cable boxes here don't have an SVHS out (cheap bastards). Now I'm curious though, I'll have to look into it.
You can find out pretty much everything about Tivo at this forum.
FWIW I have a ReplayTV 3030 and the SVHS i/o works fine, I use it with a Dish Network sat system.
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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