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Sonicblue files for Chap 11
An anonymous reader writes "ReplayTV and Rio maker Sonicblue is a goner, filing for bankruptcy and selling their assets to D&M, the Japanese parent company of Denon and Marantz.
No word what will happen to all those Replay users out there -- that $140 deal on Amazon isn't looking so hot now, is it?"
"from the dept."
Pretty sad. Can't even afford their dept. here on Slashdot.
Hopefully Tivo won't go the same route. Fortunately, if it did, the active Tivo hackers community would probably provide some solutions for replacing the discontinued service portion of the Tivo product.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
So, what kind of opportunities does this present to the home user? Presumably we're going to see lots of these units showing up on eBay - can't you just use it as a standalone PVR without the service???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I wished Matsushita Electric (the parent company of Panasonic) had bought out SonicBlue at least a couple of years ago.
Panasonic could have kept the ReplayTV PVR and Rio players as a viable line of products or at least incorporated its technology into Panasonic products.
This is why I think TiVo will be purchased by Sony fairly soon, given that Sony already is committed to using Linux for consumer product development and also Sony is a TiVo licensee. Given Sony's name recognition, TiVo products could really become popular under Sony's stewardship.
I'm kind of curious why Diamond and its offshoots have such a tough time staying afloat in today's market. Diamond made really good video cards, then got bought S3 (and hasn't been seen since). Now Sonicblue (Diamond Rio) has gone under. I really want to know if they just weren't as popular a brand as I thought or if they were very poorly managed.
I bought the original Rio, I bought the RIO mp3-cd player, and I even had bought stock. I was hoping that they would turn it around after seeing their advisory a few months ago. It's too bad that SonicBlue didn't capture the digital media market, they entered too early.
I guess when the big coporations started selling their mp3 players it was all over. Damn.
--------
Free your mind.
Well, now that SonicBlue seems to be out of the picture, now the only major retailer of PVR technology is TiVO. Unless you count UltimateTV, which I guess is still being sold, but I haven't seen ads or any indication of Microsoft pushing it for a long time.
Tivo COULD do well by this, since if support for ReplayTV drops dead, users of ReplayTV will still want SOME kind of PVR (and I'm not talking about those who are willing to waste days and weeks hacking the box, here)...or, could make it harder on them, since the MPAA and their relatives now only have one big company to focus on.
The next business quarter will probably be a turning point for PVR technology. TiVO has a better chance of surviving if those that are orphaned by ReplayTV move over to it. If they don't, TiVO instead will be 'hanging on' for some time, and its fate (and ability to manage lawsuits like the one ReplayTV got, DMCA-wise) will be a lot more uncertain.
I don't ReplayTV is going to disappear anytime soon. The company may be liquidating it's assets but anything(ReplayTV subscriptions) that has a steady revenue stream is bound to be of interest to someone.
After much research I bought my ReplayTV a month ago. I love the thing. With the commercial skip and the quick advance, I actually enjoy my favorite shows now.
I wonder if D&M will try to maintain the unique value that ReplayTV presents. It is a hackers paradise. I also paid my $299 for lifetime activation. I also got an e-mail asking about a future product that was just a ReplayTV player that would stream video from your recorder to the player in another room. I was really excited about that as well...
SonicBlue did such a great job buying up all these cool gadgets, I wonder what really went to their demise?
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
My brother and I have both owned RioVolt players. Between the way they both just quit working after about a year (as did their replacements) and the way they had this habit of just crashing if you push the volume button too quickly or when they encountered a cooked mp3, I'm not too happy with the quality of their products. To make matters worse, I have tried to use their e-mail tech support several times, and have never been able to get a response.
Much like Google. Even if it's not in everyone's homes yet, most people know what it is. ReplayTV was just their unsuccesful competitor.
I think it would benefit the customers if they were to make Replay Open Source. The vast experience and technical know-how of the Open Source developer community would allow the natural evolution of Replay which would introduce a lot of new functionality.
It would be a shame not allow the Open Source developer community complete access to Replay.
Only when we provide a simple way of cracking encrypted PayTV channels can we wrest control away from HBO.
Which is nice.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
It means theyre fucked up, and need some time to gather their maoney and pay off debts. Its not good, but its not the end.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This is no surprise. I saw this coming months ago. In early December of 2002, I purchased a Sonicblue ReplayTV 5040 as an early Christmas present for myself. I set it up three weeks later, the week of Christmas. It worked fine for about a month, no problems. However, suddenly, while watching a recorded episode of "Enterprise" on Sunday, January 19th, about halfway through the episode, the ReplayTV got stuck, with no movement whatsoever. The unit failed to respond to any remote control-issued commands. I then turned the power off and back on, and it was stuck at the boot-up screen. I tried unplugging it altogether, replugging it, but got the same thing. I called Sonicblue technical support a few days later, and they agreed that the machine was broke, and asked me to send it in and I'd get a new ReplayTV 5040 unit in return ASAP.
:(
I shipped out my broken ReplayTV 5040 unit, waited about two weeks, and did not hear or receive anything from Sonicblue, and noticed that my credit card was still being charged the monthly service fee. I called Sonicblue back up, and asked what was going on, and they said they were out of ReplayTV 5040s, and asked me to be patient while I wait to get mine. I noticed the last week of February, that I was charged another monthly service fee. I called Sonicblue back up for a third time, and they said they would suspend my account temporarily until I got my new ReplayTV, but they would not refund me the two months of service charges that I got no service for. When I asked what the status was of my new ReplayTV 5040 unit, I was told they still have not received any new units, and asked me to continue being patient and wait.
Well, it's a month later, two months after I sent my broken ReplayTV 5040 unit into Sonicblue, and I still haven't received a new or repaired unit. At this point, I doubt I ever will. Oh well, that was $320 wasted.
From what I hear, TiVo has been having similar trouble. It's a shame, DVR was a fantastic idea, but it doesn't appear to have really caught on with the consumers, and being fought by Hollywood and television executives didn't help any. I guess I should just go back to using a VCR and buy a Super VHS VCR in the meantime, heh.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
(sigh) Another fine US electronics company bites the dust... When are American companies going to learn that overhyping, overmarketing, underdeveloping products just doesn't work? I'm so tired of buying products that look they were beta tested by chimps. Look at the Motorola T720 cell phone released by Verizon... This one passed through Verizon's supposedly rigorous testing process. The software on the first release was so buggy that Verizon actually recalled the hardware, even though a simple software upgrade would've sufficed. The lastest firmware versions aren't much better. It took me five minutes to realize that the software was sh*t, due to the screen being garbled by going through menus.
Even the company that makes Chia pets recently filed for bankruptcy. Apparently there was too much money being spent on "Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia" ads and not enough on quality control. Rumor has it that over 50% of the Chia pets that made it to store shelves were cracked or broken. Of the remaining good ones, 4% had missing seed packets (!) and 8% had dud seeds. Depressing.
In my personal opinion, the only way TiVo will continue to survive is to merge with a larger company.
That company is Sony Corporation. There are two good reasons for this: 1) Sony already has experience using Linux for consumer products, so developing for TiVo will not require a new learning curve for their engineers, and 2) Sony already is a licensee of TiVo technology.
With the recognition of one of the best-known brands in the world and Sony's powerful marketing muscle, Sony could incorporate TiVo technology into HDTV tuner boxes (cable, over-air, and DBS) and even onto projection TV units. It's even possible that Sony could even merge TiVo technology into products derived from the successor to the PlayStation 2.
In the good ole US of A, chapter 11 is reorganization. This gives a the company protection from creditors to get its house in order. Companies often come out of chapter 11.
Chapter 7 is liquidation. This company, as they say, is no more. This is for companies that are looking for an organized sell-off of assets.
More info at 411bankruptcy.com.
So SonicBlue is not necessarily gone for good. However, if they are selling off their major product lines, I wonder how they plan to achieve profitability.
I think a lot of people stayed away from purchasing ReplayTV units due to the company's financial situation. Consumers don't want to fork over $400 for a PVR when there questions as to whether the company will exist in a few months time. I think they also overestimated the market for people looking for broadband enabled PVR's. A year ago, ReplayTV's were ridiculously expensive, not many people are willing pay $1000 for a PVR. Trying to dump them on the market as a last ditch effort to get new customers just increases the speculation as to the viability of the company.
Maybe he meant "debt" instead of "dept", or maybe just "from the debt dept"?
Now, there's no competition and anyone who is addicted to PVR functionality is basically stuck with TiVo. (MythTV not withstanding.) And TiVo now has little reason to fear the loss of customers, so they have less reason to actually improve the product.
I love my TiVo, but this I think this is a bad thing.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Yep, I think you're screwed Mr. Nick.
More people in the US have outhouses than PVRs. I think that was in Newsweek or something. You may love your ReplayTV, but those poor people in the Blue Ridge Mountains don't even have indoor plumbing. Just for some perspective, I know you love your PVR as I do mine.
You could sue, I suppose, but there would be no point in suing a company with no money!
These companies have TOP NOTCH "consumer" digital equipment from receivers, dvd players to high end display devices.
I personally think this is a *GOOD* thing as i can't wait to see what comes up and out of this!!
Read it here (free registration required, yadda, yadda):
Mass Rollout of DVR Technology Stuck on 'Pause'
I purchased a Replay TV 4040 when it was bleeding edge. Now what? Am I screwed? Seems like if they stop providing the guide, with no way to get the software to use another guide they are not providing the service I paid for! Can we sue? I'm sure there will be tons of unhappy people if they just turn it off.
Yes, you can sue. You can always sue. You will not win, because bankruptcy stays suits against the debtor. I see no reason a court would lift the automatic stay under these circumstances.
Essentially, you are in the position of an unsecured creditor of Sonic Blue. In other words, YF, with some emphasis on the "F".
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Ideally the box would compress MPEG-2 or 4, and allow you to interface it to a PC for archiving of old shows onto a SVCD or VCD format / MPEG-2 / DivX.
Wait... what am I saying? Why not just buy a PC with an ATI All-in-wonder card?
PVR will only work if there's enough take up. Sky, in the UK, as well as Canal+ in France, are setting up their next generation to go PVR, as *part* of the regular satellite subscription service. This will work. Sadly, the cable companies were not in on the deal with SonicBlue. If they had been, and could have charged $10 extra per month for it or something, and made a deal on hardware, then it would be workable. You cannot beat the giants, they will be right behind with their products.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Oh well, others are making good competitive products, so I guess there's no reason really to be sad to see them go.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Former resident: Exodus!
I have one friend that has a ReplayTV machine and another who has a Tivo, so I have looked at both of them. Personally, I like the Tivo better.
The problem with both of them for me is that they are bundled with a service that you are charged monthly for. I'll admit the service is a good one, but I think people for the most part don't like the idea of paying each month for something they can do manually with a VCR. Tivo and Replay have some nice features, but after all, recording a show is still the primary function and most people don't want to pay for that.
If Tivo and Replay would operate just like a VCR and allow you to use their service if you want to, or just use the system as a regular VCR if you didn't want to pay the monthly fees, then I think both systems would probably catch on a lot more than they have.
People still want a black box that's one stereo rack unit, like the DVD/VCR/CD player/et al, and a user interface easily compatible with a remote control.
The PC based solutions are nowhere near that level of functionality yet.
Doesn't look to me like TiVo needs a savior.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Prime example: "First Post" posts are, by your terms, redundant, but that's poor moderation; "First Post" posts are offtopic, not redundant, even though the effect is the same (-1).
They're not trolls or flamebait, either. A troll is a post that is fishing (trolling) for replies, and has nothing to do with creatures who live under bridges. Flamebait is a subset of troll: it's posting a deliberately extreme statement, baiting hotheads to respond with flames. A "First Post" is neither, but I metamoderat such moderation as "fair" even though it's inaccurate.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
So, what will this mean for those of us who get ReplayTV guide service from SonicBlue? Will we find our service vanish suddenly soon and our money sucked into the blackhole of SonicBlue's chapter 11, or will the buying company continue the service transparently for current subscribers?
So it's the Blue Screen of Death for all the ReplayTV's out there?
While I'm sad to see the only other real competitor to Tivo go under, my personal experience with SonicBlue was abysmal:
I bought the Rio 600 when it first came out and it's a piece of junk. On the hardware side, the device stopped working after about a week and I had to return it. Also, the batteries constantly discharge even if you don't have the device turned on so after a week of sitting in my workout bag, I still have to recharge the darn thing. The little cassette adapter they sell that you plug into your car stereo has also quit working. On the software side, you're forced to use this horrible, non-intuitive download app to load MP3 files. Luckily, I found the Linux variant and I use that now.
After a few months, I realized 32 MB was nowhere near what I needed so I broke down and ordered the PROPRIETARY memory expansion module - no CompactFlash memory slots here. SonicBlue's online web site ordering mechanism failed to inform me that they were out of stock when I placed my order. Two weeks later I decide to call and only then did they tell me that the device was out of stock. So I canceled my order, or so I thought. I found another web site and ordered the expansion and forgot about SonicBlue for awhile, that is, until four months later when I received a memory expansion box from SonicBlue and my credit card was debited $80 or so.
So I call up Sonic again - believe me you don't want to sit on hold with this company - and finally got the charge reversed and returned the item. And thankfully, that has been the last dealing I've had with SonicBlue.
If Sonic's Replay service was anything like their web ordering and MP3 player divisions, I think it's safe to assume that this company needed to go.
On the lessons learned side of things, always research your tech and open standards can mean the difference between paying $40 for an generic add-on and $80 for the proprietary version.
X
Having owned 3 SonicBlue products (RioCAR, RIO digital audio reciever, and a portable RIO player) i'm glad they're gone. I bought these products because they were cutting edge devices that, at the time, no one else had. Sadly, all of these items ,at release, had limited software support....and six months later had none.
A company must support its products for longer than six months if it's going to survive. Sure, most of these products have 3rd party support now, but to expect that at the corporate level seems like passing the buck.
-ted
Replay users will stil be able to set up their recordings manually.
You can use the Replay, at least the 4000 series, as an advanced VCR. You can manually tell your Replay to record channel 5 at 12pm everyday or just on Thursdays. It's slightly kludgy to name the recordings, but not difficult.
Another product/service of mine bites the dust; I really hope someone keeps the service up.
Oh well, being an early adopter sucks sometimes.
Now, will someone finally go and buy up Kozmo's IP and get that idea going again? I need a DVD, some bagels and a bottle of milk. Thanks.
If someone wants a VCR, why wouldn't they by a VCR? It astounds me that someone would buy a PVR if all they were interested in was a VCR.
I can answer that, as I've wanted one, but have no interest in the "we'll find what you like" service.
1) Pause live TV.
By the time we get our daugher to bed, it is almost always 8:15 - 8:20. If I tape the show, I then do something else for 40 minutes, as I don't want to watch the end of the show without seeing the beginning. With a PVR, I could start it at 8:20 and be caught up with live tv by 9:00
2) Random access to shows on tape.
I record mostly to timeshift. I don't need to archive. I'm not horribly worried about quality (as long as it's viewable). So when I tape, I tend to re-use a few tapes over and over until they wear out. If I tape something, but don't get to it right away I may need to tape something else. I'll either put it on the same tape (after the first show) or get a new tape. Now I either have multiple tapes laying around, or I end up watching my shows in "reverse order" so that I can re-use the tape if need be without writing over unwatched programs.
With a PVR I could put stuff in and watch it when I want to watch it.
--
I'd still like one, but they're just expensive, and I have no interest in paying a monthly fee. Until last month, I was only paying for very basic cable. I don't need a service to automatically look at all the programming when I only have 5 channels of anything worthwhile to worry about.
Did TiVo force SonicBlue out of business? Did TiVo engage in anti-competitive practices to drive SonicBlue to bankrupcy? On both counts, No.
TiVo is not preventing anyone from selling a PVR device. Too bad that there was such a high saturation in the nitch market of PVRs that SonicBlue couldn't stay profitable.
I remember when i bought my first ever 3D accelerator, an S3 Savage3D. It was faster than any other card i'd ever used up until then (but then again, it WAS my first 3d card), and i remember Quake 2 running sooo smoothly in all its hardware-rendered glory.
Over the next few months i started looking around for tweaks that i could perform on the card. I ended up using one program (whose name escapes my memory) that allows you set normally hidden values in the registry to change the Savage3D's core and memory clock speeds, sidebanding, etc. Needless to say i got hooked again on my Savage. Being a regular visitor to S3's website back then, i learned of their next generation chip coming out, the Savage2000, and i thought, this is going to be one helluva chip when it comes out.
Still i wasn't content with the speed i was getting out of my card, and i was still into reading hardware reviews and stuff. I wrote an email to the creator of the hack program i was using, asking him about other tweaks that he knew of. Sadly, he told me that the Savage3D had a hardware flaw right from the start, a very deep-seated bug that essentially crippled the chip, and all future generations of it, starting with the Savage4, and, i realized moments later, the Savage2000 which i had looked forward to. The programmer told me a few details of the flaw, which i can't recall right now, but basically it was a flaw that reduced the (advertised) triangle rate. For example, the Savage3d was touted to be capable of doing 5 million polys/second, but the flaw caused it to do only a quarter of that figure, around 1.25 million polys/sec. In short, a very serious flaw.
It was only a matter of time before the actual Savage2000 chip came out, and floundered miserably against competition from Nvidia, the Geforce 256. Thus began my fascination with Nvidia, and soon after i got my first ever card based on an Nvidia chip.
I think S3 would have been a great graphics chip company if they got the hardware designs down right from the start. Previously, i would insist on using only S3 cards like the Trio32 and the Virge. IMHO they were great cards.
I cannot speak for the ReplayTV but the Rio500 didn't hold up anywhere near as well as I had hoped. If I shake my Rio500 a little, it loses an internal connection and reboots. Furthermore, the customer service for the Rio500 is god-awful. I went looking for drivers one day after I reformatted my machine. That day, they had 'temporarily disabled' access to the drivers, not even posting the old ones on their site. They didn't correct this for almost a week, during which my Rio was useless.
Also, there was always a hassle getting the Rio Audio Manager (the _worst_ designed user-interface for managing large collections of MP3s I have ever seen) to reenable the MP3-ripping functionality I should have had. In the end, I went out and bought a copy of another piece of software to rip MP3s and to transfer to the Rio (I forget its name at the moment, it's the popular Windows one).
Still, I suppose I still use my Rio500. I use it to listen to audible.com audio content and it does a great job of that. For my MP3s, though, I have since upgraded to the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. I cannot get it to hook up to Linux yet but apart from that, it is great.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
They didn't really target the audience right.
The product cost too much, wasn't easily upgradable, and required a service contract (built into the price) to get the guide even if you didn't want the guide.
Offer me a freakin' digital recorder without a guide, don't push me to buy a service, and don't charge me an arm and a leg, and I'd jump at it.
That's the problem with tivo too. You don't *have* to get the service, but it keeps prompting you to. Even more annoying, you have to buy the service for EACH UNIT. If you have two or more units in your house, they can't share one guide. Yes, you get a discount on service for additional units, but you're already paying for it on the first unit. In fact, I think the discount only applies if you get the dish units anyway.
True, each unit requires a phone call. But the units could be networked to share the one guide. Since tivo stopped offering toll free calls for the guide, it's even worse.
I don't want to have to keep buying blades after I've bought the razor, to steal a phrase. That's why I bought an electric razor.
actually
they opened up the RioReciever to projects like jreceiver.sourceforge.net.
so they have a history of helping out folks with 'defunct' products on that level.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Here in Austin TimeWarner is trying out a PVR with 80GB of disk space and just about all the features of Tivo (a little dumber and doesn't have commerical skip). It's the same deal as the cable box--you only pay $9.95 a month to lease the hardware.
There is no way that Tivo can compete with that. Even though it has a better product the cable company just has it beat here from a price and marketing perspective. It's almost sad...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
The latest Archos jukebox products (recorder, FM recorder) work with no special drivers - they are USB storage compliant and work great with usb-storage under Linux.
Even the older jukebox will work under Linux, you just have to add a readily available driver.
The nice thing about having a USB storage compliant device is when you plug it in, it just becomes a drive on your system. You can copy anything to or from it as if it was a local HD (it's just alot slower). Nice not having to use any proprietary software or DRM crap.
Then, put Rockbox, the open source firmware for the Archos on it, and it makes for a very nice solution. On the go, it's a portable MP3 player; plugged into your system, you just play your MP3's with xmms right off the device. Good stuff!
s/Linux/other_OS/ and s/xmms/other_player/ as appropriate.
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
For those too young to remember, sonic blue used to be Diamond Multimedia. Some of the best graphics cards around with the Diamond Stealth line, my first performance card after I got off the triton. Long before the Monster line of products.
This was a failure from the very start. its very reminiscent of the 3dfx take over. For me, this was CEOs of a dying company buying another company so they could live another day. The company that bought diamond was already failing and they bought themselves probably 4-5 years with the purchase. Im sure it was devastating to share holders. Diamond was a SOLID company before the purchase.
Diamond was the #1 seller of video cards and they did not make their own chips. Sad.
Just like 3dfx was bought out by CEOs who also sought to extend their CEO life at the expence of the end users and shareholders.
Just plain ugly.
Their CD-based players (the Rio Volt series) support WMA...not that I've ever needed that capability, as I've always ripped to MP3, but the capability is there.
(On my last long drive, though, I left the SP90 and home and ran AeroPlayer on a Palm Tungsten T. 256 megs is enough for 4-5 hours, and it supports both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. I brought along a CD with more music to load onto the card (through a notebook and a card reader) for the return trip. The SP90 skips on rough roads, but the Palm doesn't.)
BTW, dBpowerAMP lets you convert from WMA to more open formats. (You could also build the WAVDest DirectShow filter (part of the DirectX SDK) and use it in GraphEdit to convert WMA to WAV, but that's a cumbersome approach that requires Visual C++ to implement because the WAVDest filter is only supplied as source.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
It fits in your pants pocket, the Nomad Jukebox does not... unless you have some bigass pants.
Come on Taco,
What does "ReplayTV maker Sonicblue to file for Chapter 11" actually means "ReplayTV and Rio maker Sonicblue is a goner?"
Nothing.. like many other posters commented chapter 11 is not closing it's doors, its reorginization. and any good editor would have know to make that distinction.
Oh and BTW "that $140 deal on Amazon isn't looking so hot now, is it?" Thanks for alienating all the replay users. I for one wont be contributing to ANY of YOUR causes any more. Or reading tacos shitty ass posts either.
Yeah burn my karma I don't care this heats me up.
DP
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
I'm glad I did my homework before I bought ...
... not made by Sonicblue, but made by iRiver ...
... which is the same source code for all of the MP3/CD Players they make ...
... and faster than Sonicblue released firmwares in the past ...
I own a RioVolt
It's actually not that bad in my case, because iRiver also makes the firmware (Sonicblue is real slow even though all they have to do is change the device ID)
So, I still get new features on my RioVolt
As a former employee that went through the transition from Diamond Multimedia to S3 and eventually to SonicBlue, and being layed off when they decided to close the communications division, I saw this happening two years ago.
Working in the Rio / Comm Division QA labs, I saw that the place to be taking these products was to converge the digital media devices you make with home networking solutions that you also make. There were a few products that made it out the doors that did this (the Dell Digital Audio Receiver and Rio Receiver), and they worked quite well; but soon after, the communications division was to be shut.
In that reorganization, I saw some incredibly talented engineers (who had been around since before Diamond had bought Supra, and were responsible for the incredible SupraFAXModem and SupraSonic lines) laid off and get instantly hired by other companies in the SW Washington / NW Oregon area, such as Sharp Labs, Logitech, and Intel. These people still work there, creating great products.
Now that the age of wireless-in-the-home and broadband networking are upon us, SonicBlue has to buy home networking equipment that they once engineered to incorporate into devices that they once had on the engineering roadmap. Due to incredible mismanagement, along with exorborant costs of moving offices, and newfound competition from the digital audio core market (thanks, Apple!) the strain was too much to bear.
Now I will finally get some form of profit from the Employee Stock Purchase Program, in the form of a failed-investment tax writeoff...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The network is actually owned and operated by another company. When you signed up for monthly or lifetime memberships, Sonic Blue got a one shot "commission" on the sale. This network also supports the built in TVGuide that my TV has and some of the scrolling menues on sat or cable TV. As I understand it, the Sonic Blue devices will continue to function properly for an indefinate amount of time.
Dear Customers,
ReplayTV values your business. We are committed to seamlessly transitioning the ReplayTV Service to the product lineâ(TM)s new owners. Everyone on the ReplayTV team will be working closely with the new owners to ensure that our customers continue to receive the award-winning ReplayTV Service without interruption.
We are optimistic about our future and appreciate your support through this transition.
Thank you,
The ReplayTV Team
I bought a Rio 500. The firmware immediatly corrupted, rendering the device useless. Sonicblue's tools failed.
I'm happy w/ my Nomad IIC now.