Rovi Acquires DVR Company TiVo For $1.1 Billion (usatoday.com)

Major Blud writes: TiVo, maker of one of the first consumer DVR's, has been purchased by IP powerhouse Rovi (formerly known as Macrovision) for $1.1 Billion. The combined company will go by the TiVo name. According to USA Today, "Shares of Rovi (ROVI) were up 3.7% to $17.99 in premarket trading. TiVo (TIVO) shares closed Thursday up 2% to $9.42." The combined company will reportedly hold more than 6,000 patents related to TV and video technology. Both Robi and TiVo represent a $3 billion entertainment technology company, with saving synergies of $100 million expected over the first year, the companies said.

Comments

macrovision, wow..

[TheGratefulNet]

man, have not heard that name in ages.

wonder if I still have any s-video cables around. not in use, mind you. are you kidding me?

Not as big a deal nowadays

[93 Escort Wagon]

I've always loved my Tivos, but - as we become less dependent on the cable channel feed coming into the house, the Tivo (which we still have) seems to be unused for the most part. It was a great service, but technology has largely passed it by.

I think the only thing it gets used for anymore is cop shows from CBS. My wife really likes all those NCIS/CSI/NKVD/PDQ shows on that network, and of course CBS doesn't participate in Hulu because they're trying to get you to pay some sum of money for streaming access to their third-rate network offerings. We'd save some money by dropping the Tivo monthly fee and paying for CBS' service, but I am unwilling to do so (and I don't believe my wife is even aware of "all access"). In any case, any other shows we watch generally are being streamed from Hulu.

Re:Not as big a deal nowadays

[Darinbob]

The CBS service is pretty crappy though. Watch 5 episodes of your favorite show for free on your computer, or if you pay the subscription you get to see 7(!) episodes for free on your computer! Meanwhile with netflix you can get all episodes of all past seasons at once.

Re:Macrovision

[AK Marc]

I thought it was a perversion of Automatic Gain Control to create constructive interference to make copies of protected content (and sometimes unprotected content) unwatchable.

Re:Macrovision

[clonehappy]

Yes, Macrovision was most widely implemented by corrupting the vertical blanking signal which in turn caused the AGC in a consumer video recorder to go haywire and screw the video all to hell. The best part is that this little scheme did nothing to stop all but the most amateur pirates, as you could buy a cheap "Macrovision buster" to insert in-line with the video connection to remove the corruption, or use a professional deck with a TBC that was simply immune to it.

So as usual, commercial-scale pirates went about their business unscathed while fair use and the average consumer had the screws turned on them.

Fear the clouds

[WaffleMonster]

Half of what I watched on Tivo was RSS feeds that would automatically download Internet broadcasts and put them in my play list.

One day after years of use Tivo decided to drop the feature. New shows stopped downloading and menu options just disappeared. There was not even a way remaining to manually enter a video RSS URL.

It isn't like this requires Tivo to host or distribute content. They just decided hey you know what ... FUCK YOU ... and to pour salt on the wound stub where old menu used to be basically said go buy a new TiVo buddy.

Tivo ruined the industry with their patent trolling and now it doesn't even matter because cable itself is dying.

Re:Macrovision

[Megane]

I recently tried to use an old all-in-one VHS+DVD recorder to archive some old home camcorder tapes. It constantly aborted by seeing the noise from recording gaps as copy protection. So now I'm going to have to use a capture-based solution after all. At least the equipment is a lot smaller than it was 10 years ago.

Fuck you behind whatever name you hide behind, Macrovision.