You may be aware that TiVo sued Echostar over infringing patents relating to the technology behind its PVRs. TiVo won and the court ruled that TiVo would get $88 million in damages and also Echostar would have to stop selling and using infringing PVRs.
Bit it wasn't over and Echostar appealed and was awarded some breathing space for the time being and then later requested more time to get certain documents together. The case has now got progressively more complex but I've tried to make sense of it the best I can.
The U.S. District Court Judge Duffey is now getting very frustrated with Echostar for not getting these documents in on time. It's rare for a court to give a company an extended time for appeal and Echostar is really dragging its heals in the mud and as a result is rubbing the courts up the wrong way.
Judge Duffey has now ordered that Echostar must now get the documents together by February 15th.
If all this legal mumbo jumbo is leaving your head hurting let me just conclude that the outlook still looks good for TiVo and Echostar is in for a tough ride.
Whenever you think of a DVR you automatically think of a grey box sitting in your front room hooked up to your TV. But digital video recorders are aren't just restricted to the living room, for example those sturdy surveillance DVRs.
But according to All DVR News Fast Forward Video Inc, a company that specializes in DVR technology for broadcast, industrial video, presentation, and military applications, has announced its Outrider CF DVR.
This DVR fits into the helmet of a SuperCross racer and is used for used for on-body recording while fitted with a camera, and has been worn by Ryan Clark.
Engadget has discovered that the TiVo Series 3 has had the PROM chip hacked. If you're like me your probably thinking "what the hell is a PROM chip?"
Well PROM stands for Programmable Read Only Memory and the PROM chip is placed on the motherboard inside your TiVo and contains some pre-loaded basic intelligence. It is this intelligence that contains security to prevent your TiVo from being modified with third party software and hacks.
This PROM hack can be done in the following not-so-simple steps:
De-solder the PROM chip from the TiVo motherboard
If you haven't fried the chip continue...
Extract the code from the Chip
Edit the Hex
Burn a new PROM
Re-solder the new chip back to the motherboard
Hope you haven't fried the chip
As you can see this is not exactly the easiest hack to do and it is only the first step. The next stage is developing individual hacks to alter the functionality of the TiVo, such as enabling TiVo2Go.
If you're technically minded enough and want to learn more then head over to the DealDatabase forums for more info.
Now this is cool! Control electronic devices in your house from the comfort of your couch using a TiVo remote control. That means you can now annoy other family members by turning off their lights from the comfort of your couch!
Once you have Homeseer installed there seems to be no limit on what devices can be controlled. If its got a button, a setting, a switch or anything like that then its likely that you could control it from your TiVo.
TiVo is now launching a service called StopWatch which offers data on the programming and viewing habits of TiVo customers, including that all important time shifted data. The time shifted data is what advertisers and TV networks are really concerned with at the moment.
TiVo has won one over on its leading ratings competitor Nielsen by offering second-by-second viewing data which Nielsen has refused to offer so far.
The advertising company Starcom is the first subscriber to TiVo's valuable data.
Yesterday I mentioned Microsoft's propriety video format MS-DVR which is used for Windows Media Center recordings.
Previously you would need to convert the videos to a more standard format using something like DVRBox so you could edit them with ease. However Vista Movie Maker now comes with full support of MS-DVR files so editing out those adverts is now pretty easy.
Check out the Vista-ready OMS-GX300 Media Center from Okoro Media Systems. This beast of a media center will set you back $4,995 but includes some mouth watering specs:
A silver and sleek SilverStone LC18 case which comes with a little 7" Touch Screen display featuring a 15:9 wide display with HDTV transcoder for 720p
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core processor
2GB of Crucial's Ballistix memory
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card
1TB of hard drive space (2x 500GB) – can be upgraded to 2TB.
16x Dual-Layer +-RW DVD Writer
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX PCIE 768MB HDTV & HDCP
Saber 2020 TV Tuners with hardware MPEG-2 encoder.
PCI Over-The-Air HDTV Tuner
Optional USB HDTV Tuner
Microsoft Media Center Remote Control w/ IR Blaster
Snapstream Firefly Remote Control
You may be thinking this is a little over the top for a Media Center PC unless you want to do gaming. But as CrunchGear points out, a great feature of Vista is that it works seamlessly with the Xbox 360 controller making living room gaming from the couch much more appealing.
The new TiVX 5010-P HD TV recorder is one unique and sleek PVR from DViCO. To start off this futuristic grey cylinder does not contain an internal hard drive but requires you to add your own external one via a USB port.
I actually quite like the option of being able to add my own external hard drives as it makes for easy upgrades. But wait there's more; this HD TV recorder is more than just a weird looking PVR, it's also a media extender.
It can record videos in 1920 x 1080 resolution and stream files to and from a PC in a variety of video formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, (VOB, ISO and IFO), AVI, TP, WMV9. It can also send pictures and movies around the house too. Other features include:
An Electronic Program Guide to use on your TV
ATSC hi-def television tuner
DVI, component, S-Video and composite video outs
2x USB 2.0 ports for adding external disk drives
A third USB port for other storage devices (e.g digital camera, MP3 player)
fixed 10/100Mbps Ethernet or 802.11b/g WiFi
It is currently being launched in Korea and will cost $352. There is no word on releases in other territories, but hopefully there will be.
The Vista launch has come upon on us and so it's a busy time for a lot of PC related companies. One of which is Hauppauge which has announced that it has the widest range of Vista ready PC tuner cards available.
Hauppauge will now be offering the new Vista driver software with every Hauppauge product shipped from today. Existing customers can upgrade from the Hauppauge website.
If you are keen to read more about the Windows Vista launch then check out Engadget.
OQO, a company that specializes in ultra-mobile personal computing, announced the Model 02 at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
The Model 02 is an extremely powerful portable mini PC that has the ability to run Windows Vista Ultimate. Kevin Groppe of FloppyHead pointed out that if it can run Windows Vista Ultimate (which comes with MCE) it must therefore be a mini Media Center PC.
Further more the Model 02 comes with USB support so could get hooked up with a USB Digital Tuner turning the Model 02 into a portable mini PVR. Also the Model 02 has a HDMI output so could be hooked up to any HD TV.
Whether this little PC could stand up to the heavy requirements of PVR recording and playing HD content is yet to be seen. But it would damn cool if it could!
DVR-MS is a proprietary Microsoft format that is used in Media Center Edition to record videos. Unfortunately this format can't be played on may other devices so you may want to be able to easily convert your DVR-MS video recordings to some other format..
DVRBox is free open source software that does just that converting your DVR-MS video files into other formats including Xvid and MPEG 4. Features include:
Editing of DVR-MS videos
Batch processing
Automatic crop detection
Scheduled compression
Outputs to MPEG-4 including XviD, x264
In development is manual cropping, directory scanning, profilesand iPod Support.
SageTV, the popular provider of PC PVR software, has announced support for AMD LIVE! Home Cinema And Home Media Server.
An AMD LIVE! PC is much like a Windows Media Center PC offering a complete solution for video, music and photo access through an easy to use interface. With SageTV an AMD LIVE! Home Cinema will also provide the popular complete PVR functionality from SageTV too.
STMicroelectronics has announced its Dual HD Chip, the STi7200. This is the worlds first Dual HDTV Decoder Chip to be manufactured in 65nm Technology which means it can offer lower power consumption and competitive pricing.
The STi7200 chip supports HD inputs from HD DVD and Blu-ray formats, as well as high-definition satellite and cable TV standards. The chip is designed to be used in set top boxes, PVRs, and DVD electronics.
It will basically allow you to watch HD material on two TV sets, one channel in high definition and the other downscaled on-chip to standard definition. This means you can have a single HD PVR for two TVs.
The STi7200 Dual HD chip will be available to consumer electronics manufacturers and priced at $30 in high volume.
The Trinion L7 is a well packed Home Theater PC (HTPC) with a nifty 800 x 480 resolution touch-screen LCD monitor that can be controlled by an IR remote. It features easy playback of DVDs, photos, TV episodes etc and can even launch games and office applications from the LCD screen itself.
Features of this sleek looking HTPC include:
A silver chassis
1.66GHz Intel T5500 processor
1GB of DDR2 RAM
250GB hard drive
8-channel onboard audio
Gigabit Ethernet
Combo drive
Windows XP Media Center Edition
Front-panel flash card readers
USB / FireWire connectors
Audio in / out ports
The Trinion L7 should be available in South Korea sometime soon although no release details are available.
You've probably heard that the new HD-DVD format, which was reportedly un-crackable, has been hacked. Last week the anonymous hacker that goes by the name of muslix64 was interviewed by Slyck.com
This was an extremely interesting interview with muslix64 who sounded like a modest and intelligent character that was more interested in fair rights for the consumer than promoting piracy.
The reason that muslix64 started hacking the HD DVD protection was because he wasn't able to appropriately play back a HD DVD film that he purchased on a non-HDCP HD monitor.
Interestingly muslix64 also described that the hacking that DVD Jon did to crack the protection on DVDs some years ago, was actually technically more difficult than what he himself did with HD DVD.
You may be aware that TiVo sued Echostar over infringing patents relating to the technology behind its PVRs. TiVo won and the court ruled that TiVo would get $88 million in damages and also Echostar would have to stop selling and using infringing PVRs.
We already knew that TiVo was getting into the ratings business when it 
The new TiVX 5010-P HD TV recorder is one unique and sleek PVR from DViCO. To start off this futuristic grey cylinder does not contain an internal hard drive but requires you to add your own external one via a USB port. 
SageTV, the popular provider of PC PVR software, has announced support for AMD LIVE! Home Cinema And Home Media Server.
STMicroelectronics has announced its Dual HD Chip, the STi7200. This is the worlds first Dual HDTV Decoder Chip to be manufactured in 65nm Technology which means it can offer lower power consumption and competitive pricing.
You've probably heard that the new HD-DVD format, which was reportedly un-crackable, has been hacked. Last week the anonymous hacker that goes by the name of muslix64 was 
