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Interview with SONICblue's CEO

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the don't-envy-this-guy dept.

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."

17 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. How can that be? by JonTurner · · Score: 5, Funny

    "...against Tivo this upcoming holiday season."
    I don't understand. Microsoft, uh, I mean Slate, told me that TiVO was dead.

  2. Replay vs. TiVo? by FortKnox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    how he sees ReplayTV PVR stacking up against Tivo this upcoming holiday season

    The only way ReplayTV can get a heads up over TiVo is to sell the software to digital cable companies to use it in their cable boxes.
    TiVo has a bigger following, and a partnership with DirecTV. It just has a foothold over all other DVRs.

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    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
    1. Re:Replay vs. TiVo? by crow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      TiVo has the advantage of having better name recognition. Most of the numerical advantage TiVo has is due to their integration with satellite receivers. If you only look at the stand-alone units, TiVo and ReplayTV are much closer.

      The real issue is advertising. The one message they've gotten out to consumers is "pause live TV." That's nice, but not something you pay hundreds of dollars for. Automatically skipping commercials is probably a better message, and one that TiVo won't have.

  3. Screw inovation, what I want is good price by ferratus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in Canada (at least where I live), the only way to get PVR functionnality is to get the satellite dish with the high-end receiver with pvr integrated.

    As far as I know, this is the only way to get at. At 600$ canadian (ok, so it's about 25$ US) it's quite pricey and I hate to encourage a monopoly.

    Hopefully this stuff will have lower prices soon...

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    IP Therefore I am.
  4. There's one thing I want a DVR to do by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Record one show on one channel while allowing me to watch another on another channel.

    Sky+ does this, but I'd rather have a device that isn't quite so tightly tied to the broadcast organisation since I'd rather have someone a little more neutral making decisions about what it will and will not record. TiVO will allow me to watch a previously recorded show while recording, which is nice, but not what I want.

    1. Re:There's one thing I want a DVR to do by crow · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.)

  5. How they stack up... by Alsee · · Score: 5, Funny

    how he sees ReplayTV PVR stacking up against Tivo this upcoming holiday season

    Well, they are both packaged in rectangular boxes of about the same size. I'd say they'd stack up against each other pretty evenly.

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  6. Whatever, man. by Emmettfish · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There are a lot of people out there mailing hardware manufacturers to let them know about Ogg Vorbis, asking about Vorbis support, etc. Here's an excerpt from a customer service mail from SonicBLUE that was passed to me last week:

    Information for future upgrades to newer formats is not available at this time. Please continue to check our website for further information.

    Please note that almost all current Rio players support the WMA format, this codec that will provide digital quality sound at 64k encoding rates. The newest WMA codec WMA9 is by far the best audio compression codec in the world and is supported in all of our players that offer WMA support.

    In the words of the Filthy Critic: "Hey, whore! How's the whoring?"

    Emmett

  7. Their biggest problem by jerrytcow · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've always seen poor customer service and poor product quality as sonicblue/rio's biggest problem. I've heard from many people that until these are fixed they will never buy a sonicblue product.

    My girlfriend and I each bought a Rio500 about 2 years ago. Both stopped working and were returned to the online store. She got a refund, but I had it replaced. I had to send it in twice within a year to have it repaired. Their customer service was no help - each time they made it a huge hassle to send it in. The second time they had it for 4 or 5 months before they returned it. I was browsing online forums during this time to try to find out what was wrong and found many people with the same problems/complaints.

    Someone pointed me to this BBB link which basically says
    Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau.Specifically, our records show a pattern of non-response to consumer complaints brought to its attention by the Bureau.

    The BBB has two ratings: satisfactory and unsatisfactory, and it very difficult to receive the latter.

  8. Get it on Wal-Mart shelves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the TiVo vs. Replay war, the one who will win will be the first one to get their boxes on all Wal-Mart shelves well before Christmas. That giant retailer could do more for either PVR company than any cable box deal this season.

  9. ReplayTV 4500 by sfbanutt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We just got a replayTV 4500 and I love it. The commercial advance is pretty amazing, I've not seen it skip over programming yet, but it skips at least 75% of the commercials automatically and on some shows, it gets 'em all. It'll also allow you to record from DVD or VHS sources as well as saving recorded shows to a VCR. We bought it initially because they were out of TiVos at the store, but now I'm glad we did.

    jim

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    I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
  10. Ballard of 3dfx fame? by /ASCII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this the same Greg Ballard who used to be the CEO of 3dfx?
    If so, isn't it the consensus that bad management drove 3dfx to the ground?

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  11. TV... by ekephart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sorry, but I don't care how high-tech TV gets I still won't pay for it. I get a few channels by default with my cable modem. And I mean a few, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN, WB, Discovery. I basically only watch the WB and FOX for the Simpsons and once in a while the Discovery channel just for those cool forensics shows. I guess I'm out of sync with the general public but IMHO TV programming by and large is worthless.

    Go mods go, flaimbait, offtopic, troll.

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    1. Re:TV... by damiangerous · · Score: 5, Funny
      I guess I'm out of sync with the general public but IMHO TV programming by and large is worthless.

      No, it's still pretty trendy here on Slashdot to speak condescendingly of the "idiot box" and brag about how you only have a television set because you're forced to for some byzantine reason and you really wouldn't watch the awful thing if you could possibly avoid it. I'd say you're quite in sync with the arrogant prick crowd, if that's what you're aiming for.

  12. Replay TV-- Ya Gotta Love It! by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  13. TiVo Price Drop by Evanrude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think if TiVo did something crazy like - cut their prices in ... half? or one quarter off. Something drastic (either for the unit itself or the subscription price...or both!) They would attract a broader market who could actually afford the device. If they did something like this around the holiday season, TiVo could be the "big gift" this year.

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    ~.Evanrude
  14. Because as usual most people won't read it by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
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