Tivo (TIVO) stock saw a massive increase this morning peaking right around 7.53 thanks to reports on the injunction imposed against Echostar in the patent infringement case originally filed January 2004.
As reported on this site, the court ordered Echostar to stop sales of competing PVR products that infringed on Tivo's patents. In addition, Echostar was being forced to turn off PVR capabilities on the millions of existing units within the next 30 days.
As the day progressed it was revealed that Echostar won a temporary reprieve allowing the company to continue selling said units until the court can decide whether the injunction should be stayed throughout the entire appeals process. Fortunately for Dish customers, there will not be a mass shut down of PVRs come 30 days, at least yet.
I've got a great idea on how Echostar should accomplish this daunting task when and if it has to be done. All they need to do is send out an army of technicians to disconnect the hard drive cables within the units ala AT&T. That seemed to work really well for them...
Tivo shares closed out the afternoon at 7.02 up 8.17%. The stock was up to 7.13 in aftermarket trading at the time of this posting.
Despite all the drama, Echostar (DISH) shares were only down .92% to 32.45 when the market closed.
Tivo Executive A: You know what? Tivo really doesn't get enough attention. I just punched us into Google and we've only got a little over 40 million hits and there's only a thousand or so stories that mention us today in Google News. This makes me nervous.
Tivo Executive B: You're right. We need to think of something to get back into the minds of the masses. There's just not enough people hawking our product not to mention, not enough high profile celebrities using it or giving us random quotes about its greatness.
Tivo Executive A: Yes, but what could we possibly do to top the Tivo Ambassador contest people went crazy over. That was pure genius. There's still like 100,000 pages referencing it to this day.
Tivo Executive B: Whatever we do, we've got to get people to stop talking about the Series 3 for a while. People need to give it a rest. It's coming! Sheesh!
Tivo Executive A: No doubt. This is going to be tough. Tivo's already a perfect product. I mean it's been branded in the collective minds of the general public. It's entered the world's lexicon. What product to achieve this feat isn't considered perfect? Have you ever had a faulty Kleenex? Ever not found something you Googled?
Tivo Executive B: What about the Xerox machine down the hall that's always jammed? Tivo Executive A: Oh yeah. I forgot.
Tivo Executive B: Anyhow, we need something absolutely mind numbing. Something that's going to turn the PVR market on its side. Something revolutionary. It's coming to me Tivo Executive A. I'm seeing high top fades, rap music, mediocre acting. Oh la, Oh la, Ay. I've got it! Someone call Kid N Play! Let's have a House Party! Tivo Executive A: You're amazing! How do you come up with this stuff? The people are going to love it. I'm estimating 50,000 pages referencing it by December, easy.
Tivo (TIVO) opened on the Nasdaq at 6.25 this morning, which is about 33% lower than its 52-week-high of 9.29. The price had crept up to 6.33 at the time of this posting.
The share price hit its 52-week-high right around the time the favorable patent dispute between Tivo and Echostar (DISH) was announced, but has cooled considerably since then. The stock tends to fluctuate pretty wildly during the week despite a lack of any serious announcements. Expect more of the same this week.
Tivo continues to play musical executives and announced yesterday that Steve Sordello, former Executive Vice President and CFO of Ask Jeeves Inc., would take the helm as Senior Vice President and CFO for Tivo effective August 21st of this year.
Steve Sordello is taking the place of Stuart West who is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Stuart West was the acting CFO for the last four months and replaced David Courtney back in April of this year who left the company to pursue other opportunities.
This happened right around the time Tivo announced that Brodie Keast, Executive Vice President & General Manager of the Consumer Division was also leaving the company. I wonder if he was pursuing other opportunities.
This was all preceded by former NBC executive, Tom Rogers, taking the place of co-founder, Mike Ramsay as CEO and President of Tivo. However, Mike Ramsay still sits on the board of directors.
I almost forgot. Before that, former CEO and President Marty Yudkovitz resigned in early 2005. Were you able to keep that convoluted series of events straight?
With all the management shifts occurring at Tivo the last couple of years, one could speculate that things may not be so rosy in the house that built PVR. One could also speculate that there is a business out there called "Other Opportunities Inc." that is wooing Tivo executives left and right with huge salaries.
In short, I have no idea what the heck is going on at the company, but if people keep jumping ship and my stock value keeps skipping all over the place I'm not going to be very happy shareholder. Here's to hoping everything is okay.
TiVo's Desktop 2.3 is barely a week old, and already Dave Zatz has posted two neat hacks, one to increase the encoding size of files and the other to transcode prior downloads.
The standard encoding size for portable devices on Desktop 2.3 is 320 x 240, but with a bit of jiggery-pokery, you can increase that to 480 x 272 or up to 640 x 480, and you can also make sure that any recordings downloaded prior to the new software update will also work on portable devices.
Just follow the links for some TiVo hacking goodness:
I'm probably a bit late with this one, as I've noticed several reports on my travels, but TiVo has announced that it plans to enter the Chinese market later this year.
The move is probably more to do with strengthening TiVo's public image, rather than trying to build a market, even though China is one of the world's fastest growing economies at present.
Still it'll be interesting to see how they perform and what products they plan to offer to the Asian market.
I'm not sure if this is news or not, but I've certainly never seen this one before.
The Chicago Tribune's Alex L. Goldfayn has posted an article which really amounts to a free advert for Lou Jacob's Chicago-based DVRupgrade Inc.
According to the item, Jacob has been upgrading TiVos for the popular TiVo digital video recorders for six years and currently has offers ranging from $129 for an 80 GB drive (70 hours of video) to $1,000 for two 500 GB drives (150 hours of HD content).
DVRupgrade can do the work for you for an extra $50 to $100, but if you browse about on the Internet, you're bound to find plenty of places that will do it either cheaper, or who will provide step-by-step instructions on how to do it yourself.
In fact, if you know of any such places, post them here and we'll give them some airtime.
Our chums at TV Squad (what am I saying, I'm one of those chums) are pointing to a story in USA Today about TiVo's new service which allows users to access lists and recommendations from a variety of magazine experts working in some of the U.S.A's top titles (e.g. a food critic may suggest a cookery show, or an electronics editor might recommend a gadget show), from which the user can then set recordings.
The service will not be available to DirecTV TiVo subscribers, but can be found on Tivo's Web site and should be added to the main TiVo interface in the near future.
It's another great example of extending one of TiVo's great features (which I frequently regret isn't available on Sky+), where shows are automatically captured based on the kind of things you record regularly.
TiVo's co-founder, Jim Barton has produced an excellent article for ACM Queue which discusses the
history of TiVo, starting with the full background behind the project and spilling into design principles
and the various steps behind the actual creation of the device.
As Thomas Hawk has already said in his own article on the item, the
key for TiVo was to create a simple, reliable and easy-to-use device which performed a popular and somewhat complex
function; recording a multitude of television shows from literally thousands of sources.
The best part of
the article is the "Soul of a DVR" section, which captures perfectly the concept that most technology
manufacturers will never grasp; the product has to simply work, and work in a way that seems almost magical.
Testimony continued today before a jury in Marshall's U. S. District Court. as attorneys for EchoStar
Communications Corp. began presentation of their case for the defense against TiVo's patent infringement lawsuit,
having called the company's vice president of engineering technology, Dave Kummer, to give evidence.
Kummer
said he was hired by the Dish Network provider back in late 1992 "to build a system that could compete effectively
against cable companies."
EchoStar attorney Harold J. McElhinny argued that TiVo could not claim
infringement of their patented hardware since "EchoStar had a non-infringing alternative available" before
TiVo co-inventor Jim Barton was granted his patent.
The majority of testimony offered by Kummer centered on
the development of these "non-infringing" devices, namely EchoStar's 7100 and 7200 television set-top
boxes.
The debate continues over TiVo's claim to ownership of the technology, while EchoStar maintains their
creation of a PVR device had progressed before Barton had submitted his patent, although TiVo attorney Morgan Chu argued in response "we agree they built their own boxes, but we disagree that they own their own technology."
Following months of delays, TiVo's patent case against
EchoStar Communications Corp. will commence on Wednesday, during which TiVo will lay claim to the technology which
enables the recording of one program while the user is watching another.
The trial is expected to take
roughly two and a half weeks, and we should expect to see a verdict some time before May, but if TiVo actually
convinces the courts that it's patent has been infringed, it could cost the company's competitors a small fortune in
settlements and royalty fees.
If TiVo loses, not only will it have to pay out legal fees and such like, but
it will leave the market wide open for competitors to fully exploit the technology with impunity.
Yesterday, we posted
an item about TiVo Down Under, a company devoted to
importing TiVos to Australia and offering various support services.
However, we received an email from Gavin
Johnson about a whole TiVo community in Australia, called OzTiVo, who were set up long before TiVo Down Under, and
operate entirely on a non-profit basis.
Additionally, OzTiVo looks like a much more comprehensive service
that TiVo Down Under, providing users with server access to the latest TiVo electronic program guides and software
updates ,and also offers a thriving support community.
If you live in the land down under and fancy getting
a hold of a TiVo, OzTiVo is probably one of the first stops you should make.
As we stated last week, no one from PVR Wire was able to attend
CES 2006, although the Weblogs Inc. Network was there in force in the shape of the mighty Engadget team, and myself and
Todd did our best to keep track of all the latest PVR-related developments at the gadget expo.
It's no real
surprise that the big news at CES this year centered around video, and in particular PVR devices, both for use in the
"digital living room" and on the move. For us, the most significant news centered around four main things:
the Toshiba Gigabit S, Google's Video Store, the BSkyB-Microsoft deal and the sneak preview of the Series 3 TiVo.
Here's a roundup of everything we blogged over the course of the event, in case you missed any of it:
As we stated last week, no one from PVR Wire was able to attend
CES 2006, although the Weblogs Inc. Network was there in force in the shape of the mighty Engadget team, and myself and
Todd did our best to keep track of all the latest PVR-related developments at the gadget expo.
