TiVo Patent Suit Advances on Federal Court Denial of Echostar Motions

Posted on Friday, March 11, 2005 by MegaZone

TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that the federal district court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division has denied motions to dismiss and transfer TiVo’s patent infringement case against Echostar Communications Corporation (ECC) and affiliated companies. In that case, TiVo has alleged that ECC and certain subsidiaries are violating a key TiVo patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,233,389 issued to TiVo in May 2001, known as the “Time Warp” patent). The defendants had sought to transfer the case out of Texas, and two of the defendants argued that they were not subject to jurisdiction in Texas. The Court denied both motions.

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TiVo’s quarterly loss widens, subscribers rise

Posted on Friday, March 11, 2005 by MegaZone

TiVo, maker of digital video recorders, on Thursday posted a wider fourth-quarter loss on higher costs, although subscriptions to its television recording service grew sharply. TiVo, whose systems let users customize TV viewing by recording shows on a built-in computer hard drive for playback later, said the net loss rose to $33.7 million, or 42 cents a share, from $12.4 million, or 18 cents a share. Analysts had expected a loss of 43 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

I’m listening to the webcast right now to see if anything special was said.

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Apple sides with Blu-ray Disc in format war

Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2005 by MegaZone

Apple Computer has sided with the Blu-ray Disc Association, as it enters the debate over which specification will become the next-generation DVD format.

Ooh, interesting. Now Dell, HP, and Apple are all backing BD for computing, that’s a powerful combo – Dell & HP are the two largest PC vendors in the world, Apple, of course, has the Mac market – and is a strong player in content creation. And, of course, you have Sony also using BD in their PCs, releasing BD content – and the killer, BD in the PS3. I was concerned that the Xbox2 might go HD-DVD and that could’ve muddied the waters a bit, but the recent news is that the Xbox2 will be using a standard 12x DVD drive and games will be on a DVD-9. They will be using the VC-1 codec for HD content for cut scenes, but won’t be able to playback HD movies. (Except, I’d bet, the special discs like T2 which are WMV9 on a DVD and currently only play on a PC. VC-1 is basically WMV9.)

Posted in Apple, Blu-ray/HD DVD | 6 Comments

Bruce Willis on The Daily Show

Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2005 by MegaZone

Bruce Willis was on The Daily Show tonight, and he was talking about how he has a TiVo that he uses to record the show because he’s a fan, and that he’s also a “TiVo devotee”. I thought it was cool. ;-) These kinds of spontaneous mentions are better than the product placement on other shows. :-)

Edit: Well, PVRBlog posted a screenshot and some video here.

Posted in TiVo | 3 Comments

TiVo, EchoStar patent infringement case advances

Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2005 by MegaZone

Jury selection in the TiVo, EchoStar Communications patent infringement lawsuit will begin on Oct. 4 giving observers some sense of the time frame for the case. TiVo brought the suit against EchoStar in January of last year. The digital video recording company said Wednesday the federal district court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, denied EchoStar’s motion to transfer the case outside Texas.

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