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TiVo Patent Victory Over Dish Network Upheld
Thomas Hawk writes "An appeals court today shot down Dish Network's last chance to avoid a multi-million lawsuit verdict won by TiVo over their time shifting DVR technology. In addition to having to pay TiVo a minimum of $92 million, Dish Network will also now have to honor a court injunction to turn off DVR software to most of their customers. I hope Dish Network customers like commercials with their daily dose of Dr. Phil."
is it just me, or does it seem that the law is more about money than justice?
it sure looks like professionalism these days means cheat your country and screw society
Americans are a complacent lot. They'll tolerate taxes and fee increases, regulation, government snooping, abridgement of century-old (and God given) rights, etc. with maybe one in ten thousand even bothering to pick up a telephone or a pen and contact their congressman or senator.
But if you fuck with their television, you'll see angry roving mobs take to the streets that make "21 days later" look like a tea party. I suspect this will not end well.
I was trying to think of something really witty to say, something that would totally make the parent rethink their post and question their whole thought structure on Americans... but all I could come up with was this Family Guy quote:
...how sad is that?
"Who touched the thermostat?"
FYI this has no effect on anyone with a newer model Dish DVR, i.e. they aren't going to take it away from you. New software was pushed out 6 months ago to replace the infringing software. If you have a real old one, now is a good time to upgrade.
Dish DVR is not going away, it's their old software that violated the software patents. Their new software does not violate the TiVo software patents. This new software was pushed out by Dish about 3 months ago. Very misleading article.
Tivo's:
http://investor.tivo.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=304285
Dish's:
http://dish.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=304293
The latter includes these tidbits:
The decision, however, will have no effect on our current or future customers because EchoStar's engineers have developed and deployed 'next-generation' DVR software to our customers' DVRs. This improved software is fully operational, has been automatically downloaded to current customers, and does not infringe the Tivo patent at issue in the Federal Circuit's ruling.
"All DISH Network customers can continue to use their DVRs without any interruption or changes to the award-winning DVR features and services provided by DISH Network.
"We intend to appeal the Federal Circuit's ruling to the United States Supreme Court."
No, Dish can (and if you RTFAed, they will) appeal to the Supremes.
But, true, Dish has a tough hill to climb. The Supremes only accept a small percentage of all appeals. Dish's goose is mostly cooked.
Shutting down the DVRs for Dish Network would be the stupidest thing that Tivo could do. Dish PR just says "It's Tivo's fault," puts something out on a wire service, someone picks up the story that Tivo made Dish network but not DirecTV or Comcast shut down their DVR's, and bingo, Tivo are the bad guys even though they're the ones protecting their stolen IP from another company. Licensing is just as much in Tivo's favor as it is Dish's at this point. Letting the Dish shutdown happen would be a fiasco.
Also, does this have ramifications for other disk-based DVR's such as those offered by cable companies and DirecTV?
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
The idea of recording live-tv, shifting it so you can watch it anytime wasn't solely invented by TiVO, many Amiga users and Apple users have been using this technology LONG before people got "TiVO.
Today - In Europe (where we don't have TiVO, at least in Denmark) we use TimeShift recorders from JVC, Panasonic, United...heck...I even have a SONY myself - best thing next to buttered bread, can't do without it - to imagine that some "American court" could come in and force the companies worldwide to deactivate their TimeShift function just because TiVO says so...is ludicrous and it will NEVER EVER happen. I Skip ADS all the time with the timeshift function, TiVO can go sc*** themselves.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
That's extremely misleading. You can get the monitor and mouse to work sometimes. I've heard stories of Linux hackers printing things up, although I've never seen an actual printout that originated from a Linux machine.
"New software was pushed out 6 months ago to replace the infringing software"
Like where does it say that, do you have any citations. If as you say new software was pushed out then why did they lose the ruling and why are they appealing.
"Dish is now saying that they actually will appeal this verdict all the way to the Supreme Court"
davecb5620@gmail.com
Dr. Bronner, is that you?!
if you actually owned a tivo, you wouldn't be saying any of that. Tivo really provides a better dvr experience than any other. That and dish network decided they didn't want to deal with tivo in the beginning. So they just made their own bed.
kudos to tivo for protecting their business.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Nothing non-obvious? So then you thought of it first? Wow! Oh wait - you didn't?! Then sit down and shut up.
I've seen\used the other DVRs that are apparently also using the same "obvious" ideas and they SUCK while using a TIVO is actually pretty good. Gee, why is that? Could it be because TIVO has had incentive to innovate and not just give us a VCR with the tape swapped for a HDD? Perhaps because they are divorced from the service providers tit and have to work to get customers?
I like my service providing companies hungry thanks. Wake me when a providers "PVR" is worth a shit.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
How does that relate to the "Time Warp" patent (#6,233,389)? This patent is actually rather narrow and describes low-level implementation details that are totally invisible to the user. The claims are, IMO, obvious to an average developer, but they are worded in such a way that it's not hard to come up with a slightly less obvious implementation that doesn't infringe. The fact that EchoStar put out a software update that works around the patent supports this.
You're talking about the quality of the GUI and menus, which have nothing to do with this litigation.
The main reason is because Tivo is a standalone DVR. It is pretty much the only standalone DVR in the USA right now. Cable and Satellite providers want you to rent their DVRs, and they can charge whatever they want. Consumers should have a choice, which the providers do not want.
I hope this $92 million dollar settlement will prevent Tivo from rolling out new nagra cards. It might buy us a few more years of easy piracy. Thanks Tivo.
Otherwise would you shut the fuck up please?
Yeah, I did. Well, not me personally but the guys I went to college with in the mid 90s. They had cable fed into TV tuners and streaming to drives, controlled automatically by TV listens off the Internet. This was an obvious convergence of 1) TV tuner cards, 2) fast-enough processing at affordable prices, and 3) cheap-enough storage. TiVo came along and boxed it all up, then patented what other people had already been doing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
$ cat /dev/video > /var/spool/movie.mpeg&; xanim /var/spool/movie.mpeg
Excuse me while I run out and file for a patent.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
WOW! The courts deserve a round of applauds. Ergen political and economical power did not erode the justice system. It is time to start seeing SERIUOSLY the threat that, our technology is taken. Echostar can not be an example for the Chinese, Japanese and other countries of stealing technology and get away with it. The fact is, that without protection for our tech patents and rights, it will be easy to replicate the hard work of our tech inventors and innovators-- by technology depredators. For instances, I could just copy Yahoo, or Google front-page formats and make it my own. EASY, but not too fast Dish buddies. I do not think the Supreme Court justice is negotiable.
Perhaps it's that Tivo "just works"? If I wasn't gainfully employeed and had tens of hours a week to burn, I'd get a MythTV box. If I wanted to be frustrated all the time when watching TV, I'd get a Comcast DVR system. Tivo's benefit isn't software, or the guide data, it's usability. Those of us with disposable income don't mind paying $15/month to have all of our shows waiting for us and not having a problem when we try to watch them.
Even thought I own a DishNetwork receiver, I think that TiVo was right to get their patent and Dish Network shouldn't have fought as hard as they did. TiVo isn't a bunch of patent trolls; they built and marketed hardware which other people copied.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Hey! In all these years, my first real /.rant! Naw probably been a few before.
This explains why the sudden change to a less intuitive, absolutely illogical, bloated software they pushed out a few months ago.
Never did figure out what the new "feature" named DishPass was anyway. Some way to record things I don't want, in ways I don't like.
Nice.
I wondered why, after years of my DVR doing things the way I liked, it suddenly turned into a big smoking pile o cow dung!
Unfortunately for Dish, this new information won't stop the change I've already put in motion. I am going MythTV/Fedora and cable.
Screw Dish and the 5.95/Month fee for the pleasure of using the DVR the I ALREADY OWN!
Never thought I'd go back to cable but ohh well.
Theres always the Canadian Freesats.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Ummmm wouldn't it be more like 'In 5 years when TiVo is out of business, the owners will all be sipping margaritas in Costa Rica living off all the money they made and say how we could bring this upon ourselves again.'
Just take a different look at the world.
And the Supremes answer would be something like "love don't come easy."
Sigh. I guess we'll "just have to wait."
No, Dish lawyers are *claiming* that new software doesn't violate the patents, but what credibility do they have?
Look at the evidence:
(1) They are still claiming their original software doesn't violate the patents
(2) TiVo patents are quite broad and I would imagine difficult to work around
(3) No Dish customers have reported any issues or changes to the operation or capabilities of their DVR
This is quite obviously a lie by Dish lawyers which they will have the burden to prove.
TiVo has patents on the "jump to tick" on the timeline and the 8 second jump back among other things.
No. Those features DID NOT exist until Tivo came out with them, and you won't see them on any other other PVR - due to the patent.
TiVo's UI and remote and functionality is the absolute best thought out.
I'm going to have to give it up soon, thanks to DirecTV and TiVo divorcing, and TiVo deciding to diss legacy (Lifetime) customers with the removal of discount rates for additional units.
I really hate that situation.
I'll be signing with AT&T UVerse as soon as they get my house address listed as green in the database. I wish they used CableCARDs so I could keep my HD TiVo. *sigh*
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Sounds like a statement by somebody who has never even glanced at TiVo's patents. Good work trying to spread an entirely ignorant position.
DISH WILL NOT have "to turn off DVR to most of its customers". Anyone using the 622 or 722 (what they ship now as their DVR offerings) is NOT affected. Software was upgraded months ago specifically to get around the patent. If you have a far older DVR, then all this means, is you'll get a free upgrade to the new model, rather than paying for it. A pain in the ass though the patent is, a travesty this is not.
Mmm, pimping your own misleading blog FTW! It's not like many people in the comments of his own blog entry he submitted didn't point out this RATHER MAJOR DISCREPANCY... but oh noes! Removing scaremongering does not help pageviews, does it?
A ton of the patents are also held by ReplayTV, which came out just before Tivo. Replay was recently purchased by Direct TV, which is an interesting move since Replay and Tivo cross licensed their patents since neither one could produce a box without infringing on the other's patents.
I also like the interface on my Replay boxes, unfortunately the company stopped making their set-top boxes and never addressed HD, but the features were great (and even their early models had the 8 second skip back and 30 second skip forward).
I have a friend with the Dish PVR and the software on it was quite nice.
When I get around to upgrading everything to HD I'm not sure what I'll do about a DVR. Sadly none of them will match some of my favorite features of my current one (i.e. automatic commercial skipping). Plus, I want one where I can download the content onto my PC like I can with my current one.
I'd set up Myth TV in an instant, but as far as I know it will not record any of the encrypted shows (i.e. sci-fi channel) on cable.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Funny, my 722 DVR from Dish just works, "New Episodes", hit record when I find the program in the guide, ability to search the guide by genre, keywords, actors, etc... And it only costs $6 a month. I can see how I'm being shafted, true enough.
Ye gods. I'm beginning to think TiVo broadcasts subliminal messages.
Or did you meant not to be taken literally?
Patents can't protect a goal; the fact that you can meet a goal in another way doesn't infringe on the patent. What constitutes infringement is if they do it the same way, and since TiVO actually worked, while your idea only worked in theory, I'd say that they are different methods. It also is probably relevant that TiVO's method uses a circular buffer such that
Of course, if I'm wrong, go offer your plan to Echostar. I'm sure that if you could prove to a judge that TiVO's idea existed and was trivial (perhaps with more time than you give to this reply) you'd probably be very valuable to them.
The other side you should be aware of is that I'm probably not wrong. You didn't have this idea until after 1997, and while you might be able to reinvent many (or even all) of the things TiVO did then, that only demonstrates that the implementation is trivial, not that the idea is.
Seriously, the implementation of a light bulb is trivial, but a Judge would laugh at you if you suggested the idea.
I once worked in building maintenance for a large property in Brooklyn. One day I was assigned to man the phones for problems. The worst thing that happened was the CATV feed was cut (accident). I never got so many pissed off phone calls. Worst was that we were NOT in charge of CATV. Backed up crapper ? Door won't lock ? Nothing in comparison to the lack of CATV. Nasty, nasty. I had sympathy for the very old/shut in, but the rest could have just taken a walk.
As a Dish customer, if they shut my DVR off, I expect a hefty rebate.
I'm out of the loop these days. I used to have a DirecTivo (series 1) which I'd upgraded the HDD, put a NIC in and could download any shows I wanted to put on CD/DVD. Been a good 4 years since I sold it off.
Since then, I moved to MyhtDora (Fedora + MythTV, with install almost 99% automated). I love it, but I'm out of the loop on what Tivo and Dish have to offer.
Just what is Tivo suing Dish over?
If anyone knows both MythTV and Tivo, what features does Tivo have that I can't do on my MythTV box (for virtually free, other than the Schedules Direct $20/year listing fee)?
As I understand it, these are basically patents on the concept of a DVR. This means that they can sue any implementation of that concept, including MythTV/Fedora (or anyone running it).
Of course, I generally don't care, and I'll run things like libdvdcss, even though that's not technically legal in the US, so that I can play the DVDs I actually bought on the OS/player of my choice. I imagine you do the same. Just thought I should give you a heads up on the legal issues...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Oh, come on. Drop the semicolon.
Not entirely complete, of course -- I'm not sure /dev/video exists, I don't know what xanim is, and there's the matter of whether it's actually mpeg. But the concept is, in fact, blindingly obvious.
Define "goal".
For example: I consider playing mp3 files to be a goal. However, the mp3 format is patented, and any implementation must pay ridiculous licensing fees.
So yes, I am kind of worried that TiVo's patents might cover, for example, MythTV.
Which shows you how little judges -- or maybe just you -- know about the history of the light bulb. It absolutely was a simple idea. We already had candles, why not use electricity to provide light?
It was, in fact, the implementation that was a bitch -- finding just the right material for the filament which would conduct, but not short out, wouldn't burn up immediately, and would provide a steady amount of light.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Anyone who thinks "DRM is always bad" is an idiot, a zealot, or both. There is nothing inherently wrong with DRM itself.
The problem is POOR IMPLEMENTATIONS of DRM.
People are willing to accept DRM on their game systems because when people buy a game for their game system, they expect that the game will work on their game system, or any other game system of the same model. And it does. Nobody expects to take their Nintendo CD and pop it into their PC or Mac or to rip the bits off the CD and run it on their iPod. So the DRM that inhibits people copying games is fine, because nobody expects to be able to do it.
DRM on the CD you bought is a different beast. It's not that DRM is bad, it's that when people buy a song, they expect to be able to, and have a right to, play it on ALL of their song-playing equipment. It's not that DRM is bad, it's that the DRM is a poor implementation that interferes with people's ability to use the item they bought they way they expect and have a right to.
The vast majority of people are willing to accept DRM that only prevents them from doing illegal things and possibly things they don't want to do anyway. And why shouldn't they accept that?
paintball
Thank you for saving me the trouble of explaining this! I'd point out that had TIVO simply patented what already existed and was being used by kids in a college dorm that they would never have been able to get their patent in the first place. In theory anyway. TIVO wasn't selling anything until 1997 so clearly prior art, had their patent been so simplistic, would've been easy enough to dig up for this court case - and yet wasn't.
You also do not see TIVO going after any of the software companies that make this sort of software nor have they bitched about MythTV to my knowledge - funny that. TIVO is probably one of the very few cases that make me think that perhaps software patents have some use. I'm still not convinced but for now they exist and DISH were asses about it, time to pay up. Do some digging and you'll see that DISH was no angel in this.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I wasn't responding to the specific patent claim any more than the previous poster was. He claimed TIVO did nothing non-obvious and I'd say that the "obvious" ideas the likes of DISH and Direct are using in their own hardware blow, as do the various cable boxes out there. TIVO did it better and DISH built an inferior version\COPY that they claimed was just as good. Literally I might add - DISH reps stated that to me when I switched and so did Direct when I dropped their ass.
What exactly makes you think that the Echostar update claim clears them? These are the same people that claimed there was no infringement in the first place - and lost repeatedly. What would you expect them to tell their users exactly?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Anyone know how this is going to play out insofar as Bell ExpressVu receivers in Canada?
They (Bell) use the identical "Echostar" PVR boxes as our neighbours to the south. Sounds to me like Bell is going to have a huff of angry customers too here shortly.
I found this article to be funny simply because when i had a tle-marketer call me ti sign up for Dish Network he said that I could get free TIVO. I proceeded to use this comment in my favorite game.... (keep the tele-marketer on the phone as long as you can) I was asking him if they were paying for the subscription fees to TIVO. He told me they must be because there are no fees. I asked him to verify that this was TIVO or was it just a DVR. The argument then switched to him saying that there was no difference between the two. This is enough for me to think TIVO should be able to end up owning the Dish Network.
Fair enough, I'll grant it's more usable than any other system.
So it deserves a patent blocking all other similar tech?
The claims in the patent cover only specific arrangements of data streams. By routing data in a way that's not quite as obvious as the way the patent is worded, it would be relatively straightforward to create a non-infringing implementation.
Again I will point out that they didn't think they were infringing before but were found to be. Time will tell but if it were this easy one wonders why the new code was only deployed just six months ago - this suit has been far longer running.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Face it: TiVO invented something, they documented it, they patented it. Patents are a government-granted monopoly in exchange for inventions. Echostar looked at TiVO and copied it. Period.MP3 is patented by side-effect; The MP3 patent covers a particular wavelet function that mp3 decoders need to use. It's entirely possible there's another function that produces the same result, but it's not the act of playing wavelet-compressed sounds that's patented here.I think the reason why has nothing to do with TiVO being litigous. Perhaps you simply hate patents, and hate TiVO because they patented something?
If you accept value of some patents, phrase the question thusly: Would MythTV have come up with the idea of pausing and rewinding live TV using the method described by TiVO *without* TiVO? The MythTV developers seem to think not, do you?Ah no. There's a very old light bulb which demonstrates that there's a significant amount of wiggle room in both the manufacturing and the materials. Ohh, you don't know what patents are.
You can't patent a mere idea. You patent an *invention*. It has to be something that can be built (although not necessarily work). You can't patent "making light from electricity" and perhaps this demonstrates why you're so hostile to patents (or maybe just TiVO). Nobody's patented "playing mp3 files" either.
Are you genuinely oblivious to these facts? Or are you just a asshole?
Moxi has a jump back feature. They may have licensed it from Tivo though.
I have a crappy, buggy Directv HR20 HD DVR. I received a message a couple days ago. It seems if I were to record a PPV movie (I don't, I don't like their PPV prices) I now have only one day to watch it before they are going to remotely erase it from my DVR.
Unbelievable.
Now there's DRM for ya!
.
Articles mention this win will allow Tivo to pretty much go after anyone and everyone, and I'm going to guess Echostars "next generation" DVR software will also fall be next up on the chopping block. Unless of course their new DVR software doesn't allow pausing of live tv, recording, fast forwarding, rewinding.. Pretty much anything that allows you to "warp" the multimedia streams.
I also have ReplayTV. I have to say I don't much care for the UI, but it's a lot better than the thing in the new Directv HD DVR I have, an HR20.
I used to have the first DVR that Directv had, the UltimateTV from Microsoft. Now, that I did like, I think it had the best and most intuitive and fast UI of them all, and had dual tuners from the start. Sadly that is a dead product. Mine eventually failed. I have heard from Directv reps that the people who still have those won't give them up without a fight. No HD, though. Sad.
.
All that goes to show is just how arbitrary and stupid these obvious and vaguely worded software patents are.
We are talking about the ability to manipulate a buffer. Or to work with something half-downloaded. I have personally re-invented this concept, pretty much independently of Tivo -- in this case, it was figuring out that you can play back a file that is partially downloaded, before the download finishes. Looks like YouTube and everyone else are doing the same thing there.
It is, however, the act of playing back any file which conforms to that mp3 standard. Yes, it is by side effect, but the result is the same -- despite the implementation being completely different, and the context being completely different, royalties must be paid.
I don't have TiVo. And I am interested to see how this plays out.
I do hate patents. I feel that they retard progress more than promote it, and thus defeat their own original purpose. And I feel that 15 years is an insanely long time in today's world -- the patented item would either be irrelevant or already dominant within maybe two years.
But I don't actually know enough about the patents in question. However, if the concept is simply "pausing live TV", then it absolutely was an obvious idea, in that anyone forced to use Linux video tools from that time period would likely have come up with the same thing.
The MythTV project, as is, might not exist. But someone would have.
From that page:
Nowhere does it say that MythTV could never have come up with the idea without TiVo.
And nothing on that page says anything about the manufacturing or the materials.
Do you just like to post impressive-looking links, hoping that people won't actually read them? Or is there a substance I am missing? That's not entirely a rhetorical question, by the way.
Yes, in theory. But that's not what's happening.
Allow me to direct you to this patent on what is effectively "dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/my-flash-device/mbr.img bs=512 count=1"
Or maybe you'd like to know about this patent...
I could go on. And on. The fact is, the patent system is so thoroughly broken right now that my first reaction to just about any patent is to question whether or not it should actually be a patent. I mean, somebody's got to question it, and the US Patent Office certainly isn't...
They have, however, patented an "invention" which is required to play MP3 files. Which is the whole point, really -- I can't legally play MP3 files without permission to use that wavelet function, which is, after all, even more general than MP3. It's also, by the way, one reason people are wary of MSOOXML.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Not to mention that Dish like other large companies who have lost patent cases in the past, will simply "license" whatever tech they infringed upon. The lawyers get paid (again) and Tivo gets a well-deserved cash-flow fix.
Whoever thinks Dish will simply turn off DVR service with the flick of a switch, is sorely lost when it comes to even simple business tactics, let alone creative thinking.
+++OK ATH
That's why I'm pointing out, it isn't simply "pausing live TV". It isn't ever simply anything.
People get very worked up over the abstract of a patent. Read the claims.No, it isn't, and that's my point. That patent could only be infringed by your dd if it also:
- Updated a flag in bios indicating that this occurred
- Was invoked by a special "recovery utility" by the user of the computer
- The Bios could boot from the mbr.img file while on your flash device
- A failure to boot message were based on the flag in bios
Amongst other things. Of course, you have to read the claims to see this.I can't read the other one from here, but I'm sure it's a little more involved than the abstract. If I'm wrong in this particular case, it's probably an oversight and can/would be tested easily.Well, I agree it's broken. Knee-jerk reactions don't however, help. Patents themselves aren't bad, and neither are companies who patent.
I think patenting mathematics is especially bad- which is why I oppose the MP3 patents. I don't however think that all patents are bad, nor do I think that just because a company has patents (and even litigates with them) that they are bad as well.
Keep in mind this same character also blatantly ripped off flickr.com's design/artwork and used it's own forums constantly for drumming up resentment against Flickr, arguing with it's management, and so on, in attempt to (A) drum up his own blog, and (B) the aformentioned craptastic ripoff. Posting this here is also yellow journalism in the highest form.
People who blog as a means of income and self promotion suck. There is no getting around that.
Spoken like a person who never had it.
The innovation is not only that it can jump back 8 seconds, but that there is a single button right your finger to do it. What's obvious is rewind. A one-button "Wait! What was that just now?" rewind is and was novel.
The jump back is so essential, I've caught myself reaching for it on the car radio.
I held off buying an iPod until the Apple genius showed how I could backup podcasts sorta the same way (it needs to be ONE button).
I want jump back in life. I tried to replay things I see out the window!
What slashdotters should keep in mind was that the founding TiVo developers were Linux hackers - one of us. I suspect those pioneers have been gone from TiVo for years - lost during the early hard times, but we should appreciate that they built what we wanted. That legacy is reflected that TiVo never really came down hard on TiVo hacking. They even knew the hackability was a sales feature. I was surveyed as such years ago.
Again, what's sad is TiVo's inability to come up with a business model with the film industry and TV services fighting them at every step. It never helped that you couldn't explain the product in a sentence.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
This is far more complicated than most posters suggest. The idea that Dish can simply assert that "we don't infringe any longer," and be off the hook on the injunction is absurd (recall that Dish made pre-trial claims that the old software never infringed).
A jury trial found a preponderance of evidence that Dish software infringed, and this finding was upheld on appeal.
Seems to me the questions are these:
1. Will the stay of the injunction which was effective "pending appeal" be withdrawn?
2. What is the standard of evidence and upon whom is the burden of proof to determine whether the "new" software infringes?
Updating a flag, it won't do. Special "recovery utility" absolutely is done, frequently. Boot from the flash device is not done.
My point still holds, I think. Taking a laundry list of obvious things should not make it a patent. If one of them is non-obvious -- being able to boot from the backup, without restoring it, wasn't immediately obvious to me, but still doesn't seem very innovative -- then make that the patent. However, taking a bunch of already-known or immediately obvious techniques, and adding one trivial change, shouldn't be enough to declare a completely new patent.
I don't agree that patents themselves aren't bad. And I didn't say anything bad about TiVo, only about their patent.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Okay, but standalone comes with its own set of annoyances. IR Blasters are #1 on that list. Given that Crapcast gives me a cable box from the late 1800s, with its serial port disabled, the only way TiVo (or any standalone DVR) could control it is via IR. Which is unreliable and ugly. Oh, and that also means you only get one lousy tuner. Unless you pay the $1000 or whatever ridiculous price they charge now for the TiVo HD box and pay Comcast for 2 CableCards. And then at the end of the day when your TiVo doesn't "Just work" who do you call? Comcast won't help you, they'll say "Should have bought our DVR." And TiVo would just blame Comcast.
Standalone DVRs are the opposite of the "It just works so perfectly" fairytale TiVo wants you to believe.
I'm glad you're rich, but you'll forgive me if I don't want to spend 50% more on top of my TV bill for the right to record shit on a hard drive.
Why is parent being modded down?
He's absolutely right. If this country were being run by the same assholes in 1900 as the ones who run it now, we'd all still be driving Ford Model T's because Ford would have been granted a patent on the "4-wheeled driving apparatus" and given such a lead that no one else would have ever been able to compete.
Yay TiVo is good.
Boo blocking competition stagnates the industry and is BAD. Except for f**ing TiVo. That's GOOD for them.
Haha, i said "workbook" in the parent when I was thinking "woodwork."
Since when is paying $15/month for an entertainment-related expense considered rich? What, you make $25K/year?
Well, I might be able to afford that if I didn't have to pay $1500 a month for rent.
Think about it this way. I would say you're lucky to be able to spend $180 a year on TiVo. I don't have that luxury because after I pay my rent, car payment, student loans, renter's, health, dental, and car insurance, power, water, and cable, and food to put on the table, I can't justify another $180 a year. Sure, I could do it, but it'd probably just force me to go into debt. Which is something I try to avoid.
The Tivo HD can be had for around $250. Cablecards were created so that we wouldn't have to worry about the craptastic 1800's cable box that your cable provider would give you. One MultiStream Cablecard is all you need to have dual tuners on the Tivo HD. With so many TiVo users, i find it hard to believe it doesn't work for the majority of them.
Sorry, I was thinking of the "Tivo Series 3". Apparently they have removed their heads from their asses since then and decided to offer a unit that costs less than a small car.
What's the trade-off though? What did they leave off of the "Tivo HD" that was in the "Series 3"?
I may have to reconsider them if this "CableCard" thing actually works and isn't just another chance for Comcast to screw you.
I bet most TiVo users have only one tuner though, and just have their analog cable plugged right into it. Seriously, I bet at least 75% of them.
Someone who uses those technologies says, "well that's unclever. Had I a need for that outcome, I could've done that", but patents aren't a reward for cleverness.
That is, it's not the technologies themselves that are patented, but the need in combination with the process for satisfying that need. If you have a different need, or a different process it isn't covered under the same patent.
Interestingly, when using slightly different tools, but in the same process and for the same need, it usually is covered by the patent.
As a result, when any layman performs the overtness test, they try and figure out if the need is unique first, instead of what you're doing: looking at the technologies and implementations for cleverness.
Mathematics is a troubled area. It can't be both copyrightable and patentable; it cannot be both painting and invention. Something is clearly wrong here, and while it seems to me that they have more in common with a painting of a lightbulb than of a lightbulb itself, others find that line very blurry.
Nevertheless, very few patents can be used as striking weapons. Most of them are purely defensive- to say to a judge "we're as infringing on their patent X as they are on our patent Y".
The TiVo HD and Series 3 are pretty much for HD digital. even without a cable card they support dual tuners covering over the air digital antenna, analog cable, and analog antenna. the TiVo HD has less recording capacity (20hrs HD instead of 30) but on the plus side it supports multi stream cable cards which allow for dual digital tuning with one card. if your cable company still offers analog cable you can get dual tuner series 2 TiVos for under 100 dollars or even free with the rebates they offer. There are currently 3 TiVo models that have dual tuners (Series 2 DT, Series 3 and TiVo HD, and only one model that has one tuner (Series 2). Tivos may only have one analog coax jack but there is an internal splitter which allows for dual tuning. Last June the FCC required most if not all cable providers to discontinue use of cable boxes that had security (what the cable card does) built in. So chances are if you have received a cable box after last June it will be using a cable card. Cable Cards are FCC mandated devices, not a creation of the cable providers. Keep this in mind, cable providers were opposed to it. That should tell you they are good for the consumer.
(To clarify, when I said I thought most people with TiVos had only one tuner, I actually meant they probably only get the use of one tuner because the signal has to go through their crappy cable box first, and they don't have any CableCards.)
I do think you're right, CableCard is a neat idea. But doesn't the DRM annoy you? One reason I built a PC DVR (probably tied for #1 reason with no monthly fees) is that I have control of what I've recorded. TiVo (even without CableCard) won't let me just FTP into it and copy the shows onto my Mac, iPod, PC, Linux machine, etc. but on my Windows-based DVR I can do just that. And with CableCard, you have HDCP mandatory, and at any point, all the networks or cable companies can just decide they're fed up with people being able to record shows, and flip the Broadcast Flag switch on 100% of the time. Making this expensive device far less useful than it was when you bought it.
I get that the CableCard is supposed to equal more choice for customers. And it would be awesome, but only if:
- 1. Cableco didn't require and charge for a technician visit to shove a card in a slot
- 2. Cableco didn't register the device you use the CC in, preventing you from swapping it to your new device without another charged tech visit
- 3. No DRM. No HDCP, no broadcast flag, nothing. Come on. It's pointless. If I want HD rips of every show on TV, I know where to look—BitTorrent. Including all this BS makes it way more likely I'll stop paying their ridiculous bill altogether and start downloading all my TV like some of my friends already do.
- 4. Make them 2-way and support an API like the electronics industry wanted, not requiring a Java (yuck!) environment for running more shitty cable-company interfaces, (which is what I believe has been chosen for CableCard 2.0, by the cablecos). Standardize a simple protocol for buying Video-on-Demand, PPV, etc.
- 5. Allow me to use a CableCard in a PC. A real PC, not freaking Vista built by an approved OEM only. Open freaking standards. The card's job is to decrypt the TV signal if I have the right to it. That's the only part that needs to be secret. I suppose without the added DRM, as stated above, this would be a given.
I think right now the CableCard represents a move away from choice--now it's more like "your choice of any restrictive-DRM-having appliance-like DVR that limits your fair-use rights that has been approved by Cable Labs."To be fair, TiVo allows for device/content shifting with the TiVo Desktop software. It isn't as easy and simple as a pc transfer, but it is better than nothing, which is what the cable companies offer. I agree with you 100% on the cable card issue, but currently that is the only way to go about it. I feel the consumer always gets the short stick when it comes to copyrights, DRM, etc. To be truthful, my tv watching is a mix of Tivo (Cable) and bittorrent downloading.
Dish DVR *does not* edit out commercials like tivo.
Perhaps it's that Tivo "just works"? If I wasn't gainfully employeed and had tens of hours a week to burn, I'd get a MythTV box.
Huh? I mean, granted, it took me, let's see... a day or two to get Myth running, then a bit of tweaking here and there for the few weeks that followed in order to get things running smoothly. Since then (about a year ago), it's basically been an appliance.
Something tells me you've either never actually installed and run a Myth system before, or it was so long ago that your complaints simply no longer apply.
I'd set up Myth TV in an instant, but as far as I know it will not record any of the encrypted shows (i.e. sci-fi channel) on cable.
Use a cheap cable tuner from your provider and route it's output into a capture card on the Myth side. Then drive the menagerie using an IR blaster (mine are from www.irblaster.info).
I have this set up in my system (using a pair of cheap Motorola boxes I picked up off of ebay) and in the year and a bit my system has been in service, I can count the number of missed tunes on one hand (and I suspect those are just a bug in my channel changing script that I never seem to get around to fixing, since it happens once in a blue moon).
Heck, if you get really lucky, the tuner box may have a serial or firewire port you can use to trigger the channel changes, in case you're leary of IR blasters (though, like I say, I think those fears are massively overblown).
It's not FTP, but I download shows from my Tivos on my Mac, with a simple web browser. You do need a third party tool to decode the show, but that's because the only officially supported way of doing this on the Mac is to buy Toast. On PCs, the software is there for free.
I forgot one thing. By the way, I have no CableCards either, and I'm able to do this. You can do this if you DO have CableCards, except for the explicitly protected shows.
Without CableCards, I believe NO programs would be protected, since the only thing you're recording then are analog recordings and digital OTA, which is prohibited from
having the 'broadcast flag' turned on.
That's why I see them as holding back progress, especially when they last for so long.
Fifteen years ago, Windows 95 had just come out, and people were starting to get used to the idea of the Internet. Imagine someone had managed to patent the idea of setting up a universal directory of websites, searchable by keywords, and indexed for efficiency. Where would Google be today?
I find that it's precisely the things which aren't patented, or the areas in which patents are ignored, that the more interesting things happen. I have a hard time imagining a patent system where this is not the case.
It's more that I feel that both the technology and the implementation is obvious.
Specifically: Given the need to fastforward a finite amount of time, an implementation of creating a button for that, and seeking through an index in the stored video, is kind of obvious. Given a desire to skip commercials, and the reality of what people were already doing with VCRs, the need to fastforward a finite amount of time seems obvious.
It could be that hindsight is 20/20 there, or that I really need to actually read that specific patent.
The same would be true of software, I would think.
Actually, I don't entirely agree there. A painting may not be functional, but it is possible for something to be both functional and a beautiful work of art. The trick is, in the real world, it's much easier to figure out what is form and what is function -- in software, not so much.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!