Where’s The Retail Moxi?

While (still) sifting through my accumulation of mail, I caught this Moxi ad in Wired. The moxi.com/wired link redirects to Digeo’s Moxi home page… where there’s no news on their upcoming retail DVRs. Reading between the lines, one could assume the Moxi boxes are either running behind schedule and/or will be making an appearance in … Read more

TiVo “Hooks Up” With PayPerPost

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of different TiVo marketing campaigns. Some of them have been great and some of them have been bombs, but TiVo has never been afraid of taking risks, especially when it comes to generating publicity. Whether it was their funeral for the VCR or their ad throwing a TV exec out a window, they’ve been able to get pretty good bang for their buck, from the social web.

Despite my normal enthusiasm for TiVo’s PR stunts, their latest campaign has been a little over the top, for even my tastes. It started in late August, when TiVo issued a press release that declared that their new TiVo HD box, had all the features that people expect from a perfect companion. When I first read the release it was so syrupy, I could barely finish it.

I even almost wrote a snarky blog post, where I was going to point out that despite their claims, I’m actually looking for something a little bit different from my “hook ups”, then the family friendly criteria that they included in the PR fluff. Things like someone who won’t freeze up on me after I had been out drinking with the boys or someone with a pair of really big hard drives or a companion that doesn’t get jealous when I play video games.

I ended up getting distracted and never wrote my post, but when I saw TiVo issue another lovefest press release, I just rolled my eyes and figured that I was in the wrong demographic to ever understand this one.

Normally, I wouldn’t have thought much more about this campaign, except while I was surfing YouTube, I came across several clips that appeared to be fan made videos expressing their excitement for the HD TiVo product. At first I actually thought that these were made by TiVo customers. There is definitely an indie feel to them. One of them actually does an amusing simulation of the world from TiVo’s perspective It wasn’t until I got to my my favorite video of the bunch that I finally figured out why there was such a sudden rush of TiVo videos on YouTube. Of all the clips out there, this is the only one that I could find, that was honest enough to at least identify that it’s part of the PayPerPost program.

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Digital Media Bytes

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs: Place-Shifting Grows Up: Connected Home 2 Go Finding Bandwidth for the DTV Transition: Connected Home 2 Go The Switched Digital Video Update: Connected Home 2 Go Holding Off On The Latest Gadget: TechLore WiMax on Water: Connected Home 2 Go

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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Recognize This Tuner?

In browsing HP’s DigitalLife booth (for both work and pleasure), I stumbled upon a familiar site:

Sure looks a lot like the new-yet-still-destined-to-fail ReplayTV PC hardware edition. Which looks a lot like Hauppauge’s pair (PC and Mac) of USB HD tuners. Which looks like a lot like the Eye TV Hybrid.

As an occasional USB HD tuner user (Pinnacle variety), I wonder how much ATSC tuners cost these days? Perhaps it’s time to start building this functionality into most laptops (and integrate antennas into the LCD chassis).

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Zune Day 2007

Looks like the rumors and spy shots were spot on… The new Zune lineup has landed, consisting of 80GB hard drive, 8GB flash drive, and 4GB flash drive models ($150 – $250). All sport a five-way, touch-sensitive “Zune Pad.” Additionally, Microsoft is refreshing the Zune software (original model included) with new features such as WiFi … Read more

TV Guide Evolves

Last100 put a post up yesterday on TV Guide’s new online video guide, so I decided to check it out myself. Given all of the video search sites available, I didn’t have high expectations for something novel, but I was suitably impressed. TV Guide’s layout is fantastically simple and gave me exactly the information I … Read more