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Injunction Against EchoStar Blocked
bestinshow writes "ExtremeTech has the news that a judge has blocked the injunction against Echostar Communications selling its PVRs." From the article: "The ruling was the latest in an ongoing battle between TiVo, one of earliest companies to design personal video recorders, now called digital video recorders or DVRS. 'As a result of the stay EchoStar can continue to sell, and provide to consumers, all of its digital video recorder models,' EchoStar added. 'We continue to believe the Texas decision was wrong, and should be reversed on appeal. We also continue to work on modifications to our new DVRs, and to our DVRs in the field, intended to avoid future alleged infringement.'"
It means they still have to worry about losing on appeal and getting an injunction again, but for the time being, they can continue to do what they're doing.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Obvious when? To whom?
To a skilled practitioner of the relevant art, at the time of the invention.
The law already defines that. It's just that it's quite hard to prove obviousness, except in the case of prior art.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yet if the disk based DVR and such was so obvious why wasn't it out and established before tivo?
Simple...the necessary HD space just didn't exist at the time (well, economically anyway). First gen Tivos hit the street in what, 1997 or so? HDs then, 4GB to maybe 8GB if you were lucky, were just barely spacious and speedy enough to do what a DVR needs to do. The market appeared because the core technology (hard disks) had matured enough, not because of the idea of recording/viewing directly from HD had been patented.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
OSS, no subscription fees, fairly straightforward to build.
Also, you OWN the recordings once you've made them.
>You really don't think running a computer 24/7/31/365 won't cost any money?
Nothing's free, but electricity for a computer is darn near it.
Power consumption of equipment
OTC-H3100D00 P4 2.4GHz, 256MB usage: 41 watts.
Electricity price: 8.4 cents/kwh
41 * 24 * 365 = 359,160 wh = 359 kwh
359 * 0.084 = $30.16 yearly, or $2.51 monthly.
Considering most people have a $60 monthly cable bill, I think it's fair to say that another $2.51 is inconsequential. Especially considering you might be able to trim $5 worth of stations from the bill if you use the box effectively.