[opendtv] Re: Is TiVo the bully of DVR design?

I really don't know what to do about our silly unworkable patent system. I suppose I'm lucky it is not my problem to solve.

Some inventions are just inevitable due to the availability of other emerging technology. It is still nice to reward those who notice them first but giving a monopoly to the first person making it to the market or the patent office can't really do much to further the common good.

There should be some way to incentivize practical new ideas without otherwise crippling the march of those ideas by giving them to lawyers.

Can anyone imagine a workable system?

- Tom

Manfredi, Albert E wrote: 
Amazing unfolding of events. The courts have affirmed their previous
decision that copy-while-playing-back is a TiVo exclusive feature and
not something every DVR can be expected to offer. And the Hollywood
studios continue to oppose the idea of a virtual DVR in the cable
network.

Makes it look like TiVo is the only DVR game in town. And none of this
hinges on vague arguments about GUI or EPG or other such TiVo
cleverness.

Bert

---------------------------------------- http://www.digitaltvdesignline.com/howto/settopboxdesign/192204952

August 24, 2006

Is TiVo the bully of DVR design?

By Cliff Roth

For digital video recorder designers Friday August 18 may go down in
history as a dark day. A U.S. Circuit Court judge in East Texas upheld
an April jury decision that EchoStar, parent of the popular Dish
satellite-TV service, had violated patents awarded to TiVo in their DVR
set top boxes.  At issue was not TiVo's clever user interface (by
contrast EchoStar's is quite clunky) or anything else that most
designers would think of as TiVo-specific. Rather, it was something much
broader, more basic, and what most engineers would probably consider
rather essential to the proper functioning of any DVR: the ability to
simultaneously record and play--that is, writing to the hard drive while
reading from the same drive.

The jury awarded TiVo some $89 million in damages, although they said
EchoStar acted in good faith when designing their set top boxes. An
initial order to immediately de-activate some four million EchoStar DVR
boxes was delayed, pending an appeal.

If the jury's decision continues to be upheld, the effects for set top
box industry can be devastated. A patent-holder is under no obligation
to license their intellectual property, and TiVo can ultimately require
that not just EchoStar, but also DirecTV, Scientific Atlanta, Motorola,
Pioneer, and every other manufacturer and service provider for cable-TV
and satellite-TV boxes will have to recall their products or disable the
ability to play and record simultaneously. Or switch to TiVo branded
service.

If that happens, TiVo would have a virtual monopoly on the DVR market.

It wouldn't be the first time that a single company essentially locked
up a major aspect of interactive TV with aggressive patent litigation.
That was precisely Gemstar's strategy, with the electronic program guide
(EPG). Gemstar has claimed, through a variety of lawsuits, their patents
(purchased, incidentally, from the now-defunct StarSight) essentially
cover the very idea of the EPG. A few years back, in fact, they sued
TiVo, resulting in an out-of-court settlement. That settlement, of
course, was not just monetary but insured that TV Guide (Gemstar's EPG)
would be a part of TiVo products.

Similarly, this is likely TiVo's ultimate plan: Rather than forcing
EchoStar, DirecTV, Time Warner, Comcast and everyone else from marketing
set top boxes with built-in DVRs, they want all these companies to
switch to TiVo's branded DVR service.

In the ten short years since DVRs first appeared on the market, we've
already seen innovation stifled to the point where there's been
practically nothing new for quite a while, other than upgrading to HDTV.
RePlay, the most innovative company in the field, following a
Hollywood-backed lawsuit and bankruptcy ultimately stopped making set
top boxes completely last December.

Now TiVo threatens to really put the nail in the coffin of any future
DVR innovation. Isn't the ability to simultaneously record and play on a
hard disk really a generic capability of any DVR?

The U.S. patent office has issued several notorious patents over the
past few years of comparable outrageousness -- the infamous Amazon "one
click ordering" patent comes to mind, as well as the one in the
pre-Internet early 90s that gave Compton's a patent on the very concept
of hyper-linking and multimedia.

The entire set top box manufacturing industry should get behind EchoStar
and support their appeal. Fortunately, EchoStar has historically spent
heavily on legal expenses (including another, unrelated current battle
over transmission of distant signals.)

But with so much of this industry now based outside the U.S., and much
of it in Asia beyond the reach of U.S. patent law, there's also the
distinct possibility that this will play out globally as a local story.
Whether TiVo really has the muscle, legal or otherwise, to create a
worldwide monopoly on DVRs is doubtful.

EchoStar says they're going back to the drawing boards to design a DVR
disk drive system that doesn't violate TiVo's patent. Good luck to them.
If the patent could be interpreted as applying only to a certain
technique for simultaneous record and playback, and not the broad
concept, then perhaps the chilling effect on the set top box industry
won't be so severe. But note that when TiVo was first introduced, back
around 1997, they explained that they had designed their split-screen
EPG specifically to work around Gemstar's patents. It hardly prevented
Gemstar's suit.

Meanwhile, there's another highly contentious technology that some
cable-TV companies have just recently introduced which might offer a
true alternative: network DVR service, in which the hard drives are
located not in the customer's set top box, but in big servers at the
cable system's head end. Just one problem with this approach: Hollywood
has already started filing lawsuits.

DVRs are clearly a very litigious product category. Watch out.

All material on this site Copyright 2006 CMP Media LLC. All rights
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--
Tom Barry                           trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx 
Now seeking new full time position as video software developer
Find my resume and video filters at www.trbarry.com


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