scooby
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join:2001-05-01
Schaumburg, IL
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| reply to AD7BK
Re: Dish Network
Was ReplayTV first or Tivo first?
Tivo appears to be trying to make an example out of Dish. The jury awarded Tivo something like $100 million in damages for the previous software violations. If this holds up, they can force everyone else to either sign a licensing contract or face a lawsuit and let the jury decide.
Comcast probably has a licensing deal with the Comcast Tivo that is in development.
DirecTV has a licensing/support contract with Tivo and they bought ReplayTV so they are probably safe from ever being sued by Tivo. The patent battle between the two would be bloody and could invalidate some of Tivo's patents. |
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joako
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join:2000-09-07
/dev/null | Both came out around the same time. I think TiVO was first but I can only find vague references to Replay being released sometime Nov 1999.
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Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
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| said by joako  :Both came out around the same time. I think TiVO was first but I can only find vague references to Replay being released sometime Nov 1999. If I recall correctly, TiVo beat Replay to market by a month.
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KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
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| reply to scooby
said by scooby :Was ReplayTV first or Tivo first? ReplayTV. They were close, in development at the same time, but ReplayTV beat Tivo to market. Not that it matters much.
Tivo appears to be trying to make an example out of Dish. They are. So far everyone's caving in to the extortion, but Dish is resisting and saying "Go to Hell." So like many just causes, they are being put through Hell. They have a history of fighting BS, and are hoping that justice will win out in the end.... which is looking a bit slim at the moment. Dish may end up having to pay the extortion fees, which of course will be passed on to customers.
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KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
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join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK | reply to Morac
Nope. ReplayTV was first. |
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Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
·Comcast
| said by KrK :Nope. ReplayTV was first. They may have announced their product first, but TiVo was first to actually have a product on the shelves. Here's a link to the story from someone at TiVo.
»www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/sh···t=389014 |
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KrK
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1 edit | Ok in researching this further, there seems to be mass confusion. It appears that ReplayTV and Tivo were unveiled at CES, and ReplayTV was pretty much ready to go while Tivo needed some more work, so Tivo's team busted hump working night and day.
From what I can tell, finished replayTV's may have been shipping first to warehouse or etc but their actual debut was scheduled and Tivo may have therefore beaten them to the punch on hitting store shelves. Some say ReplayTV was first, some say Tivo was first. It matters not much....
However what I did find out was Tivo already tried to sue ReplayTV for patent infringement..... BUT due to ReplayTV's strong set of relevant DVR patents themselves apparently what happened was both companies settled with a cross-licensing agreement--- IE they agreed to not sue each other over patents and actually did like a legal technology share agreement.
This is really what DirecTV has bought--- and one reason why they have a "Tivo can't sue us" clause... They have ReplayTV's patents and crosslicensing agreement with Tivo now.
Tivo is after Dish now.... but honestly Dish has developed it's own DVR's in house. Still with patent law it may not matter.... It's kinda a crock.... 
Tivo focused on easy of use, while ReplayTV focused on powerful features and cutting edge tech. IE Networking, Commercial Skip, etc
In fact it was Commercial skip and networking that sealed their doom. They got sued bigtime by Hollywood, and the cost of the ongoing legal suit really buried SonicBlue... We lost a good Tech company. Remember SonicBlue's routes were in S3's, IE the old Diamond Multimedia....
Long before the Ipod, there was the RIO MP3 player.... Remember that? It too was sued by the RIAA and Hollywood but it actually won the lawsuit... still cost millions to defend though, and Diamond Multimedia wasn't a huge company with deep pockets. |
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Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
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1 edit | said by KrK :This is really what DirecTV has bought--- and one reason why they have a "Tivo can't sue us" clause... They have ReplayTV's patents and crosslicensing agreement with Tivo now. I'll mention the "won't sue" contract went into effect (in 2006) a year before DirecTV bought out ReplayTV's patents (2007). It occurred when DirecTV was going to drop the DirectTV manufactured TiVo box and go solely with it's own boxes. The agreement is that DirectTV will support the TiVo boxes until 2010 and that neither company will sue the other for patent violation. See the press release.
said by KrK :Tivo is after Dish now.... but honestly Dish has developed it's own DVR's in house. Still with patent law it may not matter.... It's kinda a crock.... There is a rather interesting history between TiVo and Dish. The story, according to TiVo, is that TiVo originally approached both Dish and DirecTV to license TiVo's DVR technology. TiVo allowed both Dish and DirecTV to examine TiVo's prototype DVR. DirecTV chose to license the technology while Dish chose not to. Shortly later Dish came out with their own DVR that basically did the same exact thing as TiVo's prototype.
TiVo's patent is very specific in that it is designed to allow a machine with very little processing power to perform DVR functionality. That's not very important these days because processing power is cheap, but back in 1999 it was a big deal. That Dish came out with a DVR very similar to TiVo's at that time right after TiVo showed them how the TiVo DVR works is why TiVo chose to sue Dish. Think of it as this century's Philo Farnsworth vs. David Sarnoff.
That said, most likely, Dish has worked around TiVo's patent at this point. That's why Dish is suing TiVo to show that their new software does not infringe. Unfortunately for Dish, it's most likely too late for that to prevent the injunction from taking effect.
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KrK
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| That's TIVO's side of the story anyway.
Once nice thing Dish did though was they setup their DVR's to record the actual raw digital stream before decompression, processing back to image for TV. The result of this was that the recorded show was of the exact same picture and sound quality as the show appears on the TV.... while still getting the benefits of compression.--- IE no quality loss.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) |
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