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TiVo Wins Appeal On Patents For Pause, Ffwd, Rwd
Lorien_the_first_one writes "After years of wrangling, TiVo has won its day in court against Dish Network, formerly known as the EchoStar, when the Supreme Court declined to take up Dish Network's appeal, forcing the satellite television company to pay $104 million in damages. According to the article, 'TiVo originally won a patent infringement case in 2004 against Dish, which was then named EchoStar Communications. It charged that Dish illegally copied its technology, which allows people to pause, rewind, and record live television on digital video recorders.' Despite an injunction, Dish continued distributing its set-top boxes in the belief that the work-around they had implemented avoided infringing TiVo's patents. Now the case goes back to the lower court for review to determine if they did indeed steer clear of those patents."
As someone who still owns two Tivo's (not being used presently), this is a good day for them. At least they will get a bit of cash. Unfortunately my move to DirecTV, and TiVo's change of focus to Cable and OTA only, I have been forced to use the DirecTV DVRs. While adequate, other DVRs are in NO WAY as feature complete.
Conservative, mod down for violating
It's about the TiVo Multimedia time warping system patent.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Direct and TIVO have inked another deal and there will be new HD hardware for Direct from TIVO coming in a year or so. FWIW - I left DISH for Direct to get TIVO and left Direct to FIOS to keep TIVO. Now I'm stuck on COX but I've got my TIVO!
Anyway, hang in there - relief from that POS "DVR" they provided you is coming!
http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/03/hell-freezes-over-new-directv-hd-tivo-on-the-way/
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
As I understand it, if Tivo used a different technique of doing on TV than was used in other media, it's patentable. If Dish used a different technique of doing it on TV than Tivo did, Dish should be okay. But if Dish just copied Tivo's patented technique, then Tivo was right to stomp them.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
In 96, almost 3 years before the first tivo, I could have shown you a Mac that could do it.
What's the technique difference?
Realplayer (before tivo): video bits get sucked off the internet (which may be digitized in real time on the other end) and stuck into a ring buffer, pointer streams data off buffer, decodes and displays it. You can move the pointer around the buffer.
Tivo: video bits get sucked off a video digitizer and stuck into a ring buffer, pointer streams data off buffer, decodes and displays it. You can move the pointer around the buffer.
Dish (after tivo): video bits get sucked off a video digitizer and stuck into a ring buffer, pointer streams data off buffer, decodes and displays it. You can move the pointer around the buffer.
Maybe I'm dumb, but I fail to see how using a ring buffer to store video is worthy of a patent.
Actually, the wikipedia entry is wrong. They Honeywell patent is:
Title: Multiple independently positionable recording-reading head disk system
Abstract
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A multiple independently positionable recording-reading head optical disk system. The system includes at least one optical disk having an arrangement of data elements. A plurality of recording-reading heads read and write data onto the optical disk. An apparatus for transporting the plurality of recording-reading heads over one side of the optical disk enabling each of the recording-reading heads to read data from or write data onto the optical disk independently of the other recording-reading heads.
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This is not a TiVo. This is how to record onto optical media with multiple independent read/write heads.
This demonstrates why you should actually verify information in WikiPedia instead of quoting it blindly.