After a pretty quick trial, TiVo was awarded almost $74 million in its patent suit against EchoStar, the parent company of Dish Network. Now, TiVo may seek an injunction to keep EchoStar from selling DVRs. Pretty big news here in the DVR world. More details here:
Announced this morning, DirecTV has completed an agreement with TiVo to continue to provide service to combo DirecTV/TiVo DVRs for at least three years beyond the current agreement’s end date at the end of 2007. This means that DirecTV will continue to support (although not necessarily to sell) TiVo DVRs until 2010.
This isn’t too much of a surprise – DirecTV still supports UltimateTV boxes that haven’t been made for many years. But this will allay concerns that anyone should have in purchasing a TiVo over the home-grown R15 that DirecTV has released.
In any event, it’s nice to have a firm commitment in place, and some guarantee of a revenue stream for TiVo.
OK folks, this is really it. After April 15, 2006, TiVo won’t sell lifetime subscriptions for their standalone DVRs. (The only exception is the Humax DVD combo TiVo DVRs – those will still be able to get lifetime.)
It’s truly a great deal – TiVo even claims that the reason they are discontinuing it is that it provides too much value for too little money.
Here are some of the advantages of acting now:
We’re making it even better with two coupon codes through April 15, 2006:
TIVO25 will take $25 off the 90 or 190 hour TiVo DVRs
TIVO50 will take $50 off the 290 hour and larger TiVo DVRs
In my post of just minutes ago, I referenced TiVo Desktop for Macintosh (inasmuch as it isn’t compatible with Intel-based Macs). Well, I went back to get a screenshot of the page, and, amazingly, there’s no Mac version there at all now.
Does this mean a Universal Binary is forthcoming? We can only hope it means that and not the end of support for the Mac . . . I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Here’s the link – TiVo Desktop – if you want to keep checking for an update.
UPDATE: It’s back now – not sure what happened there.
Yet another extension to the end date of lifetime subscriptions! Our TiVo standalone units are still able to get lifetime TiVo service until 4/15/06. You can’t subscribe the units online to get the lifetime service, you have to call TiVo and do it by phone, but you can do it until 4/15/06. Important note here: this doesn’t work for any units purchased bundled with service (which is pretty much the only way you can purchase them directly from TiVo at this point).
A couple of other details: lifetime will continue to be available for Humax units. Apparently, as part of the terms of the agreement between TiVo and Humax, TiVo has to continue to offer lifetime service for these units – again, by phone only.
Next: lifetime hasn’t been an option for the DirecTV TiVo combo units for several years. If you were one of the lucky ones to get it, you’ve got a nice deal because DirecTV now considers that to be a lifetime DVR service on your account, which covers all of the DVRs on your account (which normally costs $6/month at this point).