tivo

One-day one-deal site Woot has refurbished TiVo HD units on sale for $179.99 plus an impossibly fair 5 bucks for shipping. What's more, you can get the first three months of service free by entering coupon code 3FREEHD when you activate the TiVo.

After that, it'll cost you $16.95 $12.95 per month, which is the one and only reason the Cheapskate has never taken the TiVo plunge. No, I'm more of a Windows Media Center man, what with the free program guide and all. But I've poked, prodded, and tested the TiVo HD, … Read more

A fall software update from TiVo damaged a popular feature on the company's DVR, and months later the change remains unfixed for a number of customers.

As part of the TiVoToGo feature, software from Roxio called Toast 8 allows users to transfer recorded shows from TiVo to mobile devices, like laptops and iPods, or put the shows on DVDs. The recording and transferring functions stopped working late last year for some customers using Toast.

Users began to complain starting in early October that they were unable to transfer, or burn, any TiVo'd shows at all.

"Right after … Read more

TiVo might be overstating the fabulosity of the advertisements aired during Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast.

See the headline TiVo used to lead its press release regarding the most-watched ads during the game: "Talking and Trading Baby Blows Away Star-Studded Super Bowl Competition."

Um...really? Were we watching the same game?

Even if you're not a sports person, that game was "one for the ages," as sportswriters like to say. Even in the midst of a five-hour broadcast inflated with as many empty pleas for your dollars and attention as Fox could possibly fit, the … Read more

A federal court upheld Thursday an earlier ruling that EchoStar Communications infringed on a digital video recording software patent owned by TiVo.

The Washington, D.C., court of appeals also agreed with the lower court's award of $89.6 million in damages to be paid to TiVo by EchoStar, which recently changed its name to Dish Network.

Dish plans to appeal the award for damages, the company said Thursday.

The court's decision "will have no effect on our current or future customers because EchoStar's engineers have developed and deployed next-generation DVR software to our customers' DVRs,&… Read more

It's going to be a few more days before the world gets a crack at the new and improved Apple TV. Looking to kill some time during that interminable delay? It's a perfect opportunity to check out the major competing hardware options that already offer the same on-demand Internet movie rental functionality. … Read more

If you think everybody has cable or satellite, you couldn't be more wrong. In fact, if you live in an area that's well-served by digital broadcasters, now's a better time than ever to get your TV over the air (or "OTA," as the cool kids say): yeah, you get only a handful of channels, but they're in crystal-clear digital quality--DVD quality at "worst," uncompressed high-definition at best. The problem--as we're reminded by many an e-mailer--is that there just isn't a good DVR solution for the rabbit-ears crowd, especially if you prefer high-def. (You can opt for a TiVo HD, but you'd still have to pay a monthly fee for their programming guide.) But that may finally be changing, thanks to the EchoStar TR-50. For all intents and purposes, the TR-50 takes many of the features found on Dish Networks' excellent satellite DVRs (such as the ViP622 and 722) and brings them to antenna-based TV viewers. … Read more

With the dust-up this week about Intel leaving the fold of OLPC, it got me to thinking: Will One Laptop Per Child become the TiVo of PCs for emerging markets? In other words, they spark the revolution but gain relatively little from it.

TiVo of course almost single-handidly created the DVR category and market. Their technology was very well executed, they created a user experience that is still unparalleled in terms of ease and joy of use, and with continual roll-out of innovative capabilities that kept stretching the definition of the product.

But ultimately their business model proved insufficient to … Read more