Archive for August, 2011

TiVo Granted Patent For Burning TV Shows To DVD

Aug 17

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, DVDs, TiVo | Comments off

Ahh, the DVD. Love it or hate it, it’s still one of the best ways to store data. I’ve yet to meet a hard drive that can survive for 5 years without failing, but as long you’re not using them for frisbees, the DVD can easily make it a decade or more without being damaged. There may be a question about whether or not we’ll have DVD players to play them with by then, but rest assured your data should be there.

Given my fondness for the scrappy little format, I thought it was interesting to see that TiVo was awarded a patent yesterday afternoon (Aug. 16th) for burning TV shows onto DVD. Just about anyone who has ever used a DVR has experienced hard drive related anxiety at one point or another. With the sheer amount of television out there, it’s easy to fall behind on your favorites and run out a space. Offloading programs to a DVD library is an excellent way to free up your hard drive without having to miss out on programming that you wanted to see. In the past, I’ve found this to be especially useful for archiving syndicated TV shows that aren’t always shown in their original order.

The abstract of the patent from TiVo’s application,

“According to an approach for storing digital content onto a DVD, digital content is received from a source, such as a DirecTV link, an over the air (OTA) broadcast, over a cable television link, or any other type of communications link, including the Internet. The digital content is formatted to comply with the MPEG standard to create MPEG digital content and stored on a non-volatile storage. Text-based information is received that describes one or more attributes of the received digital content. A set of DVD subpicture graphics is generated based upon the text-based information. The set of DVD subpicture graphics may represent a structure that can be navigated by a user when the DVD is played. The MPEG digital content is retrieved from the non-volatile storage, converted to DVD format and stored on the DVD with the DVD subpicture graphics. “

On the surface, the patent itself does seem a little bit obvious, but it’s also important to remember that it took the patent office almost 7 years to approve the application. Microsoft’s Media Center may have been using infringing :) on this technology for years, but I’m not sure that they had it in place prior to 2004. I think it’s also worth pointing out that even though TiVo now owns the patent on this technology, they don’t actually offer the service to their customers. Fortunately, the TiVo Community has managed to scrape together a way to do this on your own, but it would be nice to see a more elegant solution built directly into TiVo’s software.

Given it’s antique status, some may view this development as irrelevant, but because of the complex licensing issues that are tied to media, I believe that the DVD will have a much longer shelf life than most. When you consider how the studios are using artificial windows to try and dictate when you can and can’t watch certain things on Hulu and Netflix, it’s clear that if you don’t want to become a victim of disappearing windows, consumers will need the ability to archive content on their own.

DirectTV Delays Nationwide Rollout of TiVo Until (at least) 2012

Aug 4

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo | 7 Comments

Jul 1, 2011

Photo by Mike Demers

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been 3 years since TiVo announced that they were rekindling their relationship with DirectTV and yet consumers are still waiting for the DVR to drop. I’d say that even for TiVo, this kind of delay has to be some kind of record, except we’re also still waiting for the Comcast/TiVo DVR to launch.

Given the long lag time and complete radio silence by TiVo and DirectTV on the issue, I tuned into DirectTV’s 2nd quarter earnings call hungry for more information. Unfortunately, the call didn’t offer very many tasty morsels.

During the call, DirectTV’s CEO Michael White never actually mentioned TiVo by name, but did say that they the company planned on unveiling a new “high end” user interface in the fall (so far so good.) From the transcript of the call,

“the connected home experience is a fantastic experience. It’s going to get even better this fall with our new high-definition user interface and I think as we add more VOD titles, it’s just going to be more and more kind of pull from consumers I think for that experience and as I said, the good news is, we know it pays. It pays out because of the increased $2.50 in ARPU we get from it. But if we just kind of work in our way through some of the operational complexities of these, I think we’ve got a wireless capability that we’ll be launching this fall, as well as I think we’ll make it available to even more homes.”

He mentioned that this DVR would be entirely in high definition, would include multi-room functionality and would blow people away with it’s connected features. While it’s entirely possible that the DVR White is referring to, could be a generic update, a comment at the end of the call made me suspect that he was actually talking TiVo.

“we’ve got probably still some more work to do to fill in some more VOD content and really, with the HD user interface, really make that experience top for the consumer. I think we’re bringing Pandora, bringing in a bunch of things making it absolutely knock your socks off experience with the customer. And as I said, were already getting more than we had planned in ARPU lift out of those customers. So I feel great about the connected box strategy. I think we’re just working through some of the operational things.”

As far as I know, TiVo is currently the only DVR that provides support for Pandora.

On the surface this all may sound like good news to weary DirecTV customers, but once you actually dive into the details things get much less exciting. During the Q&A, White clarified that by “fall”, DirectTV really meant “the 4th quarter” and would later clarify that by the 4th quarter, he really meant closer to midway through it, since they didn’t want analysts to consider any revenue impact from a launch. Worst of all though, it sounds like DirectTV is following in Comcast’s footsteps, by limiting initial availability of the “new features” to select geographic regions.

“I think the nomad product, which is the ability to port your content from your DVR onto your iPad, I expect you’ll see that in some geographies before the end of the year, will probably going to do with in a fewer geographies to make sure that that’s working flawlessly before we roll it out so rollout might be in 2012. But you’ll see that before the end of the year, the high-definition user interface comes in in the fourth quarter.”

Given that it’s taken Comcast at least two years to expand out of the New England markets, I can’t help but wonder if there is some kind of clause in TiVo’s contract that encourages these sorts of soft launches. Previously, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers had argued that one of the benefits to TiVo being a software company is that they could download their software all at once to their partners and achieve tremendous scale almost overnight. As these rollout continue to “launch” though, this doesn’t look like a very accurate expectation for customers or shareholders to have.

While I’m sure that TiVo is very busy counting all of the money that they’ve made from their business dealings with Dish, it’s frustrating to see “legitimate business partners” continue to pay peanuts for development deals, when it’s clear that they’re only really interested in the patent protection. Instead of being upfront and honest with their customers though, both companies continue to string them along, while we’re forced to wait unreasonable periods for a product that will be obsolete before it’s even launched. For TiVo fans that are still holding out for DirectTV support, the only advice I can offer, is to go pick up a TiVo premiere, a set of HD antennas and make sure to tell DirecTV that you’ll enjoy saving hundreds of dollars per year while enjoying a better DVR.

Why Won’t AT&T Protect Your Grandmother’s Data?

Aug 3

Posted by Davis in Technology | 1 Comment

He Sold His Soul to Telephone

Photo by Thomas Hawk

While going over my finances yesterday, I noticed a strange anomaly with my bills. After 3+ years of sending out a regular phone bill in the mail, all of a sudden AT&T stopped. Concerned that there could be a mix-up with my account, I contacted AT&T’s customer support line and was told that ebilling had been activated on my account.

The only problem is that I’ve never registered for online account access, nor have I ever provided AT&T with an email address. When I asked where my bill was being emailed too, the agent couldn’t provide me with an answer, but did say that my statement had been sent out this way for the last 3 years!

People may not be able to siphon money out of your bank account with your phone records, but they can still use this information to harm you. A competitor could use the list of phone numbers you call to prospect for clients, a thief could look for patterns of activity so that they would know a good time to pull off a burglary or a home invasion or an upset ex could use the records to stalk and harass you. While I’m inclined to believe AT&T when they claim that this mixup was actually caused by one of their employees, the thought of someone (nefarious or random) seeing this level of personal detail is a little unsettling to say the least.

Given the fact that there could have potentially been an online intrusion into my privacy, I asked AT&T to investigate the matter further and even more importantly to disable access to my online account. After 30 minutes on the phone, the AT&T rep ultimately declined to investigate the matter further and told me that the company has no way of turning off access to your online bill. Her only solution was for me to register my account online and to set my own password, so that someone else couldn’t register without my being notified first.

While I imagine that a large percentage of AT&T’s customers register for online account access, I’ve got to suspect that I’m not the only one whose never taken the time to do this. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that less than 25% of all senior citizens haven’t registered for online access. Given that all one really needs is a copy of someone’s phone bill, AT&T’s policies are putting some of their least tech savvy customers at the greatest risk. With zero notification for when ebill gets turned on, customers who depend on the physical mail for their billing info must wait at least 30 days to find out that they could have been a victim to a crime. Meanwhile, someone could use the time they get from hijacking your billing, to put 1-900 charges on your phone or to sign you up for monthly plans that don’t really provide any benefits.

Other utilities that I’ve contacted, haven’t had any problems with this request. PG&E for example, won’t even provide me information over the phone, unless I show up to one of their retail locations with my ID in hand. This may seem a bit extreme for most people, but your smart meter data is just as vulnerable.

To say that 2011 has been the year of the hack is an understatement and while I’m sure that AT&T spends millions on internet security, no system is fool proof. Add the fact that AT&T actually receives a percentage of the proceeds from the estimated $2 billion illegal cramming industry and one could make an argument that this security vulnerability is by design so that AT&T can profit at the expense of their less savvy customers. I love the internet and how quick and easy it is to get access to important data in my life, but if other people can also access that data, I’m not sure that it’s worth the risk.