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Tivo Gets $215 Million Patent Settlement From AT&T
symbolset writes "Slashgear is reporting that Tivo has achieved a settlement in their patent lawsuit with AT&T. Tivo will receive the minimum sum of $215 million over six years — more if AT&T DVR subscribers go above a certain level. This settles a patent dispute going back to 2009 and has been covered here with some side issues. Confirmed by Tivo press release."
Doesn't matter since there won't be traditional TV in 10 years.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
I've always liked TiVo products - I've bought a number of them over the years (my mom loves it!). I was one of those who "won" a Series 1 way back when; their system screwed up an awarded almost everyone who entered a free TiVo.
But TiVo as a company has always worried me; their stock has generally been week; and they haven't really innovated much beyond the original DVR.
OK, it's cool that they have a 4-tuner model, but how many times do I really have that many conflicts? Especially with today's cable networks rebroadcasting shows after 3 hours for the west coast?
After years of tivo ownership i've come to the conclusion that TiVo's future is based on their patents.
So far they've released 2 new model TiVos that are no faster than their model built and designed right around windows 95.
They haven't even looked at the competition to see what works on other DVRS. (they got pnp 2 years ago. The guide still doesn't show if a show is recording)
The kicker: if my TiVo dies, I have a monthly contract with TiVo that I have to cancel. This is when they try to upsell you to their slower "new" model.
The average TiVo owner is tech savy. Savy enough to know that TiVo gave up on their hardware and is concentrating on other means of income (see parent/patent article).
An obsolete company takes a bite out of an evil company using a bullshit process.
Big news I guess, but I'm extremely meh on this one as I'm apethetic about all the players, technologies, and issues at hand.
Maybe you missed it. http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/06/directvs-tivo-ready-to-return-december-8th-in-a-few-markets/
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I won't be paying for cable TV, nor will any of my brothers. If the cable companies don't adapt and fast, they will die out with our parent generation. It's not so much that they're using the wrong technology, but rather that a similar but cheaper option is available. Internet can just as easily do phone, radio, and TV as well generic data. Adapt or die, content providers.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
My latest... no, my last purchase of a TiVo was the Premier with lifetime service. The unit is riddled with bugs.
I never expect them to get the second CPU core enabled. It is short of RAM. It bogs down. It ignores the remote for a while when you sit back down in front of the couch (which I suspect is because the OS swap out the remote control's handler process during a memory shortage). It crashes. It has a bare-bones Netflix interface that likes to crash. The high definition user interface is STILL incomplete, with many screens dropping back down to standard definition. The Amazon Video interface can't do free Prime movies. Only purchases. The non-discrete directional buttons on the remote makes for regular menu selection mistakes. If your Internet connection goes down, your locked out of much of the unit's functionality until you return.
I could go on and on about all the problems with their product. And I see that other people have their own observations. TiVo isn't in the game of producing a product/service that consumers want. We are actually just what they're selling. Collecting eyeballs for add space. And then adding bullet points for new features with minimal functionality and playing the patent race game.
Admittedly, the only good thing to come out of them recently was the iPad TiVo remote control. Nicely done. But then, they weren't doing it for their customers, I'm sure, as much as they were trying to beef up their patent portfolio, probably vs Apple.
If TiVo dies tomorrow, I won't be sad. I'll go back to the cable company's DVR and I'd enjoy it. Having all the pre-paid hardware and service is the only thing keeping me holding on. TiVo once put the customer first, but they lost sight of us. Too bad. These days, TiVo owners don't make great evangelists for their product.
In this day and age of overly broad patents and frivolous lawsuits, this case decision is actually justified.
TiVo was THE first to develop and market the DVR way back when it you would "TiVo" your favorite shows instead of using that piece of modern archeology called a VCR. Soon after TiVo's initial success, the knock-off competitiors really diminished the TiVo's success.
I even like that they get a bump in cash payments when AT&T gets more subscribers.
Now if some company would come along and make it easy for me to off load my recordings to my personal harddisk we would have fully replaced the VCRs capabilities. I hate losing my recordings if my STB goes out and simple storage expansion would be nice.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sorry. I disagree that all patent law is unjust.
Your assesment of "easy to replicate" is unsound. It takes massive amounts of engineering and execution to get past the concept stage.
I agree patents were never meant to enfoce a monopoly on such things, but they are meant to protect a new player (TiVo) who enters the market with a new idea from being unfairly steamrolled out of the market by larger established competitiors (AT&T, Dish, Echostar, Verizon).
Give it a rest. Some parts of the patent system work. Some need to be revamped and fixed. Some need to be removed all together. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
>> I never expect them to get the second CPU core enabled.
I stopped reading after this since if you actually had a TiVo Premiere you'd know the second core was enabled in the 14.9 software update.
As for your other issues: crashes, hanging, etc, I have a Premiere and have rarely if ever seen anything like that.
If your Internet connection goes down, your locked out of much of the unit's functionality until you return.
Including watching previously recorded shows.
Yep. That's cute. If your Internet connection goes down, about the only functionality left is viewing the Network Settings menu.
Of course, when I tried to do that, the unit hard-crashed and I had to unplug it and restart it, and after rebooting, it finally properly reconnected to the wired network that had never gone down.
Admittedly, the only good thing to come out of them recently was the iPad TiVo remote control. Nicely done.
You haven't tried using it much, have you? The TiVo remote control program for iOS is a giant piece of shit. It's a far better UI than the TiVo UI itself is, but it routinely crashes (try scrolling through the guide in it), regularly disconnects from the TiVo, and up until the latest version (according to the change log), would frequently mistake a TiVo Premier for a "Series 3" and disable the majority of its functionality.
The sad thing is that I'm pretty sure the TiVo is still the best DVR available. My mom has a DVR she gets through Verizon, and it's a complete piece of shit, where as the TiVo is only mostly shit.
It's really kind of sad, because if they only put a little bit of effort into bug fixes and polishing their interface, they could have a really system. But they just don't care.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I agree whole-heartedly. When I bought a TiVO for DirecTV service while living and working in Delaware, it fundamentally changed the way I watched TV. No more schedules, no more advertising (click 5 times and wait a few seconds), and I always had something available that I wanted to watch.
Torrent downloads have provided the same functionality back in Canada. I look on downloading as a big time-shifting VCR which just happens to use no tapes, but the end result is the same -- I watch what I want, when I want, not on the arbitrary schedule of the networks.
TiVO really did have a big innovation, and definitely deserved the patents they were awarded for it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I use a cablecard Tivo with Time Warner in Austin, and don't see this. They do set a lot of things (sometimes quite randomly) to what I assume is copy-once, which makes multi-room viewing mostly useless, but does not inhibit recording and playback on one DVR.