TiVo has never earned a profit in all the years they have been operating. Look at their quarterly 10Qs if you don't believe me. Part of the reason they haven't earned a profit is due to the tremendous litigation expenses associated with defending their intellectual property, not to mention that some of players in the DVR market (Echostar and certain cable companies) chose not to license TiVo's technology and undercut their price for service with cheaper knock-off designs.
TiVo doesn't have a patent on DVRs. They have a patent on the Barton Media Switch which makes DVRs affordable and more usable because it no longer requires a super fast processor and storage system to keep up with the incoming data stream. It also allows for watching and performing trick plays on what is being recorded to the disk at the moment, which is another patent TiVo owns called Time Shifting. Myth Tv is not running in conjuction with a Media Switch, so they are not in volation of the first patent, but it is possible they could be in violation of the Time Shifting patent, if you can watch, rewind, fast forward, pause, etc. a program that is currently being recorded to disk. If MythTV doesn't work that way, then don't worry about it.
To produce the first protoype device, TiVo had to spend millions in research and development. To manufacture the first units for sale cost millions more. To create the necessary infrastructure in the form of data centers and communication cost millions more. To create a sales staff, develop a marketing campaign to convince millions of TV viewers who have never even heard of the term DVR that they should pay TiVo $13 a month to watch free TV, cost millions more. To do all of this before knowing a market existed takes guts. Echostar gained from TiVo's hard work in creating demand for DVRs, took the concept and a protoype machine TiVo had left with them, and produced a competing DVR for a couple hundred thousand dollars. That is why Echostar can offer there DVR for less money, not because they are more thrifty or getting by with less profit from their customers. If Echostar had done the right thing and licensed the technology from TiVo, as DirectTV did, then you could argue all members could then compete on price and service.
MDI Security Systems out of San Antonio, TX has something like this called SenseEye VMD, but it does 3D analysis using two camera feeds to reduce false positives. Makes it so someone can't just stand in front of an object to obscure it from the software or having a bug land on the camera lense causing mass hysteria. All in all, pretty cool stuff.
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TiVo has never earned a profit in all the years they have been operating. Look at their quarterly 10Qs if you don't believe me. Part of the reason they haven't earned a profit is due to the tremendous litigation expenses associated with defending their intellectual property, not to mention that some of players in the DVR market (Echostar and certain cable companies) chose not to license TiVo's technology and undercut their price for service with cheaper knock-off designs.
TiVo doesn't have a patent on DVRs. They have a patent on the Barton Media Switch which makes DVRs affordable and more usable because it no longer requires a super fast processor and storage system to keep up with the incoming data stream. It also allows for watching and performing trick plays on what is being recorded to the disk at the moment, which is another patent TiVo owns called Time Shifting. Myth Tv is not running in conjuction with a Media Switch, so they are not in volation of the first patent, but it is possible they could be in violation of the Time Shifting patent, if you can watch, rewind, fast forward, pause, etc. a program that is currently being recorded to disk. If MythTV doesn't work that way, then don't worry about it.
To produce the first protoype device, TiVo had to spend millions in research and development. To manufacture the first units for sale cost millions more. To create the necessary infrastructure in the form of data centers and communication cost millions more. To create a sales staff, develop a marketing campaign to convince millions of TV viewers who have never even heard of the term DVR that they should pay TiVo $13 a month to watch free TV, cost millions more. To do all of this before knowing a market existed takes guts. Echostar gained from TiVo's hard work in creating demand for DVRs, took the concept and a protoype machine TiVo had left with them, and produced a competing DVR for a couple hundred thousand dollars. That is why Echostar can offer there DVR for less money, not because they are more thrifty or getting by with less profit from their customers. If Echostar had done the right thing and licensed the technology from TiVo, as DirectTV did, then you could argue all members could then compete on price and service.
MDI Security Systems out of San Antonio, TX has something like this called SenseEye VMD, but it does 3D analysis using two camera feeds to reduce false positives. Makes it so someone can't just stand in front of an object to obscure it from the software or having a bug land on the camera lense causing mass hysteria. All in all, pretty cool stuff.