Interview with SONICblue's CEO

An anonymous reader writes "itvt.com has an interview with the current CEO of SONICblue Greg Ballard where he fields questions on subjects including: the future of the DVR, the current litigation with Hollywood and how he sees ReplayTV PVR stacking up against Tivo this upcoming holiday season."

Comments

Re:There's one thing I want a DVR to do

[crow]

That's not too hard to do if you have the tuner integrated into the system. I believe you can do that with the DirecTiVo. With a stand-alone box, though, it's pretty pointless to bother setting up that feature, as most people are using cable boxes that only decode one channel at a time.

What I want is to see addressable converters become something that you can buy instead of rent from your cable company. I want to see them integrated with VCRs, TVs, and PVRs in the same way that cable-ready tuners are ubiquitous today. Once you eliminate the need for an independent tuner, there's no reason you can't sell several models of ReplayTV with different numbers of tuners.

In the meantime, people who are far more serious about TV than I am will set up two or three ReplayTV units, each with their own cable box. (Really, people do that; I'm glad I don't watch that much TV.)

Replay TV-- Ya Gotta Love It!

[RobotRunAmok]

Bought one over a Tivo specifically for the "commercial advance" feature. It's brilliant! But, uh, yeah, I can see the advertisers and the networks who take the advertisers' money getting their noses out of joint. (Note to SonicBlue: This feature works approx. 90% of the time. I'm guessing it looks for a 7.5 IRE black signal which it recognizes as the start of a break. Some cartoons, and a few of the more arty/Gothic shows (e.g., Buffy) seem to incorporate this pure black into some transitions.)

Interestingly, the purchase of the Box caused me to order more channels from DirecTV. Prior to owning one, "there was never anything good on" when I watched TV (which was usually when I was feeding a child or performing some other paternal act). Now -- a veritable virtual library of programs culled from the recently ordered History International, Discovery Science, DIY -- all the next-tier networks I thought sounded "cool" before but that I knew I would never have time to watch.

PVR's will simply crush the market for pre-school tape vids from networks like Noggin, 'Toon, and PBSKids. I got my own (Commercial Free!) kids channel now.

Seriously thinking of getting another box for the bedroom and/or office...

No, I'm not a SonicBlue employee or affiliated with them in anyway, but, I am enjoying being able to sing a product's praises for once instead of ripping it to shreds.

Because as usual most people won't read it

[Rogerborg]

Here are the pertinent issues:

• SONICblue claim that most people are only using the Send Show feature within their house, not to distribute content to friends, families and <insert current boogieman enemy of truth, justice and distributor profits>.
• SONICblue already have their own DRM that stops further propagation of recorded content after one transfer, and will adopt any studio suggested DRM standard as soon as it's decided.
• They're going to lay off more staff, but probably not a lot (this is what "We don't have anything planned" usually means)
• He has no idea how to eat into TiVo's market lead (stating that you're aiming for 30-40% of the market means you think you'll get 10%)
• Sorry, one idea. They're going to go hog wild pushing the Commercial Skip feature, and damn the lawyers. And he's not bothered about working with the content pushers to come up with an alternative, as he says that the product has too small a market share to make a difference.
• To put all of this into context though, he admits to being a lawyer and wanting to go into politics. So, translating, this means that ReplayTV is used only to send premium content to North Korea and Iraq, that they've already laid off all of their staff and will be suing them to recover past salaries, and that he personally will kill ReplayTV in return for a suitcase full of small non-sequential unmarked bills, a goldfish bowl full of crack, and a nekkid wrasslin' match with a roofied Britney Spears. Or perhaps I'm just reading too much between the lines.