TiVo Time Warp Judgment Affirmed

zapakh writes "A federal appeals court this week upheld a lower court decision that accused DISH Network and EchoStar of continuing to infringe on TiVo patents.' This is a follow-on to a Slashdot story from October. Despite a 'Herculean effort' by EchoStar in redesigning its DVR software, the ruling agrees with the district court that that was not a major redesign of the software. The patent in question is titled 'Multimedia time warping system.' TiVo is pleased with the ruling."

Comments

Dump TiVo for MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinch more pennies and ditch TiVo for MythTV:

http://www.mythtv.org/

If you're a geek and don't know about it, check it! We need more devices with MythTV preloaded on them.

Re:Dump TiVo for MythTV

[sakdoctor]

I don't think you're going to convince anyone here.

TiVo Premiere XL is $499 ,and has about the recording capacity you would expect if you plugged for a middle of the curve HD.
Now for service. $12.95 per month? How long do I intend to use this thing? Let's go for $399 which is for "life of the box" and assume that Tivo never go out of business.

So I get $898 to play with. I need to spend a premium on quiet gear, and slimline cases, PSU etc. Then I can keep it forever, upgrade incrementally, and all the geek chicks will want to come to my place to admire my e-penis.

Not a difficult choice.

Re:Dump TiVo for MythTV

[sakdoctor]

But wait, there's more.

TiVo want $59.99 for wifi. You're going to want wifi FFS!
Then you will want a range of fanboi merchandise such as the $9.99 Tivo plush, $14.99 TiVo Folding Chair for watching your Tivo, $24.99 TiVo Slippers because you're not leaving the house.

Finally at $24.99, the TiVo Duffle bag is large enough to bag up all this shit, take it to the dump, and realise what you really wanted was the MythTV with geek chick gang-bang.

Re:Dump TiVo for MythTV

[sakdoctor]

Cablecard? Is that some sort of DRM device? I'm not familiar with US cable TV.

I have a DVB-S PCI card for UK Freeview. There are currently no Freesat cards on the market, but I'll grab one when they become available. Freesat is unencrypted so I don't have to worry about that.

Re:Dump TiVo for MythTV

[pongo000]

Pinch more pennies and ditch TiVo for MythTV:

http://www.mythtv.org/

If you're a geek and don't know about it, check it! We need more devices with MythTV preloaded on them.

After several years of MythTV, the final straw was the removal of device support for my PVR-350. My time is simply worth more than the 20+ hours I probably spent over the years upgrading my MythTV box, hand-building device drivers, and dealing with other issues such as loss of audio.

If you value your time, I would suggest MythTV is not for you. I finally retired the box and got a 3-tuner DVR. Proprietary? Yes. (Actually, Linux under the cover, but good luck hacking it.) But it works consistently.

Maybe I'm not getting it right...

[Deorus]

But I kinda recall doing that with my VHS, which had a button on the remote specifically designed to disable its transmitter thus allowing me to watch other TV channels as it recorded a specific channel back in 1990... How come this wasn't used to invalidate the patent?

Does mythtv

[Colin Smith]

Automatically search the listings and record stuff I might like? It didn't the last time I looked.

 

Re:Does mythtv

[TheJokeExplainer]

"you insensitive clod!" is, of course, a reference to the 1986 Valentine's Day Calvin & Hobbes strip or The Simpsons episode Last Tap Dance in Springfield , wherein Frink exclaims to Homer, "I was merely trying to spare the girl's feelings, you insensitive clod!"