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SONICblue Hits the Auction Block
turkeywrap writes "Looks like there's no hope for SONICblue, makers of ReplayTV and Rio MP3 players. An agreement with D&M holdings (parent company of audio equipment makers Denon) fell through, so now a bankruptcy court will hold an auction for both of the main business units, ReplayTV and Rio, on April 15. Glad I bought my tivo."
As much as people speculate that TiVo is going under (about as much as the rumors that Apple will fail as well) they seem to be a company with well-defined goals and a good marketing plan.
TiVo's now just as recognizable as "Xeroxing" a document, or buying some "Kleenex". Now that they've entered the lexicon for a large part of the world I think they will have tremendous staying power.
Also, they've treaded lightly in regard to their new "Home media option," which allows people to share TV shows across a home network, and play pictures and music on their TiVo's. A careful use of copyright protection has, so far, kept them out of the legal wranglings that SonicBlue had to face the minute that every major media company in the world sued them after the ReplayTV product announcement.
the bigger question is: will SONICBlue release the specs of their service, so that others can now provide it ? Would TiVo release these specs if they were going under? Or will the bankruptcy court treat these as trade secrets, worth some monetary value to the creditors, and prevent the release?
TiVo stated once upon a time that they'd do this. Fat chance. A judge will certainly rule that this is information of value and prohibit any official release of information.
That said, there are TiVo hackers that have figured it all out already, at least for Series1 boxes. The S2 boxes are locked down more tightly (although it's being cracked very, very slowly), so dunno about that yet. DirecTiVo's aren't even under the perview of TiVo anymore, so unless DirecTV went tits up you'd still have service on them.
Will the people who forked over the $300 (or whatever) for "lifetime service" be considered creditors too? Shouldn't they be?
They are considered creditors. Of the lowest class (which is pretty much where creditors are anyway in bankruptcy court). Most creditors are lucky to see ten cents on the dollar after bankruptcy court, so it may be that you'd get a few more months or weeks of service and that'd be it. Depends on how the judge rules... with the obvious issue that pissing off your customers is not a good way to get out of bankruptcy. Based on that I'd be surprised if any judge would invalidate the lifetime service option.
Oh, you mean what happens if the company went really and truely bankrupt? And nobody bought the assets? Well, then you're still being treated like a creditor. And you're getting the same thing any other creditor in your situation would get - absolutely nothing. The various bits of IP may be sold off, but that doesn't mean you'll get access to any of it - including things like how to download scheduling data.
I suggest you look into what happened to any one of the failed "Internet PC" companies to see what would happen to your hardware. Unless you hack it, you're going to wind up with a large doorstop.
There are a number of billing services (e.g., CableData) in the US who routinely prepare various flavors of program schedule downloads and attendant metadata for the purpose of populating cable TV on-screen displays, billing systems, etc. The DBS providers (DirecTV et.al.) do their own collation. I gotta think this is a great opportunity for one of these shops to expand subscriber base substantially without adding much work.
These companies have already whipped the toughest part -- establishing a regular system wherein the networks provide you with the info in a form you can manipulate -- so the rest should be gravy.
I'm of the mindset that likes to have a choice. So if I want my TiVo to do this, I'll turn the feature on. If I don't want it to do it, I'll switch it off.