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TiVo Buys Six New Patents From IBM

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-heard-ibm-patented-thumbs dept.

Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo reported in an 8-K filing today that on March 31, 2005 they purchased six new patents from IBM. The patents purchased reportedly have to do with audience research and measurement, integration of television signals with internet access, automatic rescheduling of recordings, content screening, enhanced program information search and electronic program guide interface enhancements. For those of you privacy advocates out there you will love Patent No. 5,872,588: Method and apparatus for monitoring audio-visual materials presented to a subscriber. " The link has very little additional information.

8 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Interestingly by 2.7182 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of those patents actually depends (in IP sense) on patents bought by IBM from RCA in the 70s.

  2. Prior art. by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Interesting
    > For those of you privacy advocates out there you will love Patent No. 5,872,588: Method and apparatus for monitoring audio-visual materials presented to a subscriber.

    "The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

    - Some dude, prior art, ca. 1948

    Even as a junior employee, George was always better at writing functional specifications than literature.

  3. TiVo Recommends by teiresias · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I assume most of these patents were bought with for the TiVo Recommends functionality. I'm sure they can (and will) be used to gather information about the end user but that's not what I'm concerned with here.

    As an owner of two TiVo's, I've always disabled this feature. It's not that I don't want to know what TiVo thinks I might like, that could be interesting, it's that for the most part, this feature has always been pretty wasteful. It's recommended shows that relate to other shows I've only recorded once. Instead of recording the shows, a Tivo page with suggestions and say the teaser would be much more helpful.

    --
    -Teiresias
    1. Re:TiVo Recommends by CharlieHedlin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I keep it enabled, but mostly as a free space indicator. The TiVo will will all availible space with suggestions, and they are always deleted first. If I have 30-60 suggestions, I know those would go away before the TiVo deletes my shows.

  4. Maybe... by CDarklock · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe this will make my Tivo smarter about recording programs. Right now, if we tell TiVo not to record something on a season pass, we have to go into the TiVo and tell it to record later when the same show plays again. But some shows have no descriptions, so we can't tell which of the upcoming episodes is the one we want to record.

    However, TiVo might be able to distinguish between them using some kind of internal identifier. If it was smart, it would respond to "don't record now" by rescheduling the recording for the next time the same episode was on. I'd like to see it get smart.

    --
    Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
  5. This makes sense... by LaughingLinuxMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As everyone and their brother/sister jumps into the timeshifting business (even FLOSS), Tivo needs to stay viable. They can do that with marketing information. Correct me if I am wrong, but these patents look like they have to do with collecting data about viewing. Such market information is worth quite a bit to advertisers. I expect Tivo to use these patents to force cable providers who also do timeshifting either to take no marketing data from their services or to pay Tivo royalties for the privledge.

    -LLM

    --
    Annoy a Conservative...
  6. Here's what they're up to: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's fairly obvious to a direct marketer like myself (ducks) that these patents are preparatory to turning TV into a direct-response medium (dodges).

    Specifically, they will be able to track viewership in real time, at the individual level (sidesteps), and link that viewship to Internet use (cringes), i.e. knowing how many of the 321,456 males age 18-35 who watched your commercial for the new Ronco Sex-o-Matic actually went online and ordered one.

    On the plus side, it shouldn't take too long for the system to fine tune itself to your tastes, and show you mostly commercials for stuff you actually want to buy (feigns unconciousness).

  7. Could be a bad thing by Ruprecht+the+Monkeyb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So long as IBM held the patents, there was a good chance they'd stay out of the hands of Microsoft, Time Warner, Comcast, etc. I doubt Tivo has the cash to hold off a determined effort by any of those companies. Should those patents fall into the wrong hands, it could put a serious crimp not only on stand-alone PVRs, but even the PC boards that have equivalent functionality.