Dish/TiVO battle comes to an end with $103 million fine

[Justin]

Following a legal battle which spanned several years between Dish and TiVo, the courts have decided that Dish's actions are worthy of a fairly harsh penalty. All in all, the company will be forking over $103 million in cash to TiVo, along with interest accrued over the past several years. Further, it will be required to disable some functions on millions of digital video recorders used by its subscribers within the next 30 days.

The fine comes on top of the $105 million Dish, then called EchoStar Communications Corp., had already paid through April 2008. The company of course disagrees with the decision and plans to appeal. Things haven't looked good for them in some time, though, and many believe they would be better off striking a licensing pact. This is great news for TiVo, who no longer owns the entire DVR market, and even with this judgment is operating in a much different market they were five years ago. Dish customers, on the other hand, are at risk of losing DVR functionality in their set-top boxes at least for a while.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/34962-dish-tivo-battle-comes-to-an-end-with-103-million-fine.html

 

[Guest]

Great News!!! Yay!

I have always loved Tivo... and when Direct TV, Dish and then all the cable companies decided to put out their own versions of a DVR - with horrible results, I held on to my Tivo as long as I could... and prayed they would come back bigger than ever... (I guess it worked)

Needless to say, I am happy Direct TV made a deal with Tivo and all the others will have to follow suit or disable their boxes in such a way...

 

[windmill007]

Ya DirecTV DVR's really suck compared to Tivo. The main problem is they are so slow. I have many friends who are being forced to Directv brand DVR because locals are moving to a new satellite. None like it compared to TIVO. I have the HD Directv receiver. I have come to use it fine but if I had a Tivo brand that was fast I would drop it in a heartbeat!

 

[Guest]

The Dish Network DVR I have is really slick. I'd almost like to say that I can't live without it. Looks like I might have to. I don't have a TiVO to compare it to but I can't imagine it being any better than the Dish DVR. Maybe that's why TiVO is going after them so hard. I don't know enough about the lawsuit to know which one of them is being the biggest butthead. I guess my satellite TV bill will be going up...

 

[Guest]

You have nothing to worry about. The TiVo makes the Dish look like a elementary school class project. TiVo can stream netflix, amazon movies on demand (soon blockbuster, too), youtube, and has a MUCH better system for finding and recording seasons of shows as well as similar programs you might like.