Hertz Ain’t Sirius

For the second time in recent months, Hertz provided me with a complimentary convertible upgrade – including Sirius satellite radio. I don’t know which direction the marketing dollars flow, but these installs serve neither company well. The basic unit is tacked on and while it’s hard-wired (dangling) for both power and antenna, they chose to … Read more

DirecTV Sat-Go Reduced to $999

Not sure when the price cut hit, but DirecTV has reduced pricing for their portable Sat-Go solution by about a third ($1499 -> $999). If they didn’t limit purchases to in-home DirecTV customers, I’d be real tempted to pick one up… It’s an innately cool device. I’m not really sure why I’d need one or … Read more

TiVo v EchoStar: Boredom in the Courtroom

No disrespect to the court, the judges, the attorneys, or anyone else… but, man, was that boring.

Essentially, ~80 of us gathered in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for a little over an hour while EchoStar and TiVo provided oral argument in Echo’s appeal of TiVo’s lower court jury win in this ongoing DVR patent dispute. Echo’s position is that there were “claim construction issues” in regards to how three patent elements (2 hardware, 1 software) were presented. A whole lot of discussion (judges and lawyers from both sides) focused on the meaning and implication of the words separate (how, when, and physical versus logcial), source object/collection (in regards to software components), and an (is it both singular and plural).

The three judges posed some interesting questions during the proceedings: Why is the jury’s decision invalid? If the appeals court invalidates some of the claims but not all, do monetary awards and injunction terms change? (TiVo says no, Echo says yes.)

I have no inkling of what the outcome will be… and I suspect the case will be largely decided on the contents of the humongous documents (blue book from Echo, red book from TiVo) rather than these oral arguments, which seemed more about clarification.

So what happens next? Apparently, verdicts are put onto the web when they’re ready with no advance notice – Sadly, there won’t be any courtroom theatrics of thrown DVRs. (I’d come back for that!) Sounds like if the lower court’s ruling is simply affirmed, we should hear something in the next week or so. Otherwise, it could be a few months while the judges mull things over and render their decision.

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The TiVo v. EchoStar Update

TiVo and EchoStar head into the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this Thursday to continue arguing their ongoing patent dispute. The docket is pretty tight, so the hearing should be a brief affair. An unexpected benefit in attending the pre-DigitalLife event last week was spotting Kunal Madhukar’s badge (and the person attached). … Read more

September Slinging

After working 13 days on the road, followed by 48 hours of R&R (Halo 3-style), I’m ready to get back to some blogging. It’s obviously been a very exciting couple weeks at Sling Media (my place of employment), so here’s a quick roundup of September news in chronological order: Sling Collaborates with DirecTV on NFL … Read more

EchoStar Announces Agreement to Acquire Sling Media, Inc.

Combination Will Create Industry-Leading Digital Media Solutions Provider

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. and FOSTER CITY, Calif., September 24, 2007 – EchoStar Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) announced today that it has agreed to acquire Sling Media, Inc., a privately-held digital lifestyle products company. EchoStar, through its DISH Network®, is the third largest pay-TV provider in the United States. The transaction values Sling Media at approximately $380 million and is payable in cash and EchoStar options. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2007.

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Sling and DirecTV Stream the NFL with Supercast

There’s news out of Sling Media today, and since I don’t work for the company (unlike Dave), I feel perfectly justified in covering it. :) Sling is collaborating with DirecTV on a new offering called Supercast, which brings online streams of NFL games to the Web every Sunday. Subscribers to the DirecTV/NFL SuperFan package can … Read more

New Satellite DVRs Displayed

At the CEDIA Expo, which caters to the high-end home theater (installer), two new satellite DVRs were on display… DirecTV HR21 Pro TVSquad writes: a rack mountable unit ($1000) capable of recording 100 hours of HD programming in MPEG-4. It also packs an optical HDMI port for running long fiber optic cables without signal loss. … Read more