You may have seen ads for the Dish Network claiming its DVR service is actually “better than TiVo.” What you may not know is that they’ve been ordered to stop selling their DVR service after losing a patent struggle with the very company they claim to be better than. As a result, a judge has ordered Dish to pay TiVo a sum of $200 million as punishment.
About $110 million of that punishment actually accounts for profits Dish reaped as a result of patent infringement. The other $90 million is the slap on the wrist. Dish has already paid out nearly $193 million for previous infringement, bringing the grand total of damages to nearly $400 million. Dish says it plans to appeal this most recent ruling.
As you probably know, TiVo really needs the money. A few years ago it had been essentially left for dead. TiVo reported its first profitable year in some time early this year, but that was largely due to a few new contracts and some big lawsuit money from EchoStar. This win for Dish would keep the company healthily in the black, but as more viewers take advantage of web content, we’ll likely see TiVo struggling in the near future.
There have been plenty of rumors surrounding the Apple media event next week. We’re almost guaranteed to see an iPod update, and though people would love to see a tablet announcement, it doesn’t look likely. There is one product, though, that the world (including Apple) has all but forgotten: Apple TV.
The box hasn’t seen an update since release, really, and analysts think it’s a good candidate for a refresh at the music event. Gene Munster, an analyst for Piper Jaffray, points out that the delivery time for the 40GB Apple TV has gone from 24 hours to 1-2 weeks, which you’ll notice puts it past the media event. That could definitely mean the announcement of a new model. As far as I know, Apple TV doesn’t sell well enough to merit that kind of shortage, particularly during the beginning of September.
Unless Apple does something truly incredible with Apple TV, it will definitely get overshadowed by the addition of cameras to the Nano/Touch lines of iPods. In any case, we’re only waiting another 5 days to find out.
According to Silicon Alley Insider, Hulu has passed the nation’s second largest cable provider, Time Warner Cable, in monthly viewership. The comScore report for July puts Hulu at 38 million viewers, while Time Warner was estimated to be closer to 34 million.
As the SAI article points out, there’s not a whole lot to draw from this news. Cable is still drawing far greater revenues than Hulu, so it’s hard to say how the two will compare into the future. There’s also the matter of the content actually being watched. While it’s probably rare that someone would fire up the DVR just to watch a clip of the Colbert Report, those clips are probably a large part of the viewer count for Hulu. Then again, those Hulu viewers may end up logging more video time because accessing content is a little more active than flipping on the TV. In any case, the comparison isn’t quite one to one.
I’ve been curious to see the Blackberry Storm 2 in action for some time now, and today I thought I’d gotten my wish. Twitter user Salmondrin (whose account has apparently been pulled) has put together a decent video detailing the tech behind the Storm 2’s new screen, and he’s made it pretty easy to understand for the layman. You can find the video
For the tech savvy user, which I’m assuming most readers here to be, the video leaves a lot to be desired. It’s definitely a nice introduction – Salmondrin gives us the CDMA/GSM breakdown (both models coming, the former on Verizon, the latter on AT&T), confirms Wi-Fi, and describes in detail the differences between the original Storm and the Storm 2. What he leaves out, though, is a thorough demonstration of the new screen, which is really what sets the phone apart from both the original Storm and Apple’s iPhone.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Salmondrin does describe the way the screen works. It’s a piezo-electric screen, meaning it’s stiff when there’s no power running through it, but the screen yields to a more squishy, clickable form when presented with a current. Unlike the original Storm, which could only be clicked in one location at a time, the PE screen allows multiple point clicking, which is a big win if you’re typing fairly quickly. What isn’t clear, though, is how well typing works in that situation. Salmondrin keeps says multiple times without actually revealing anything new that the Storm 2 is better than the Storm and better than the iPhone.
I’m not here to say that the iPhone’s screen is the best thing I’ve ever held, but it’s responsive, quick, and despite my big fingers I’m able to type fairly accurately. Part of the speed, to be honest, comes from the fact that I’m not actually pushing anything. Requiring that kind of pressure is actually worse for someone with big hands because it’s harder to keep a good grip on the phone and reproduce the pressure in quick successive strokes. Now I haven’t held a Storm 2, so I don’t know how well it works. Salmondrin has, and he could have told us. He could have demoed the keyboard by typing words with letters in close proximity, like “r” and “t”. Then we would have at least seen the radius of sensitivity with each press. After watching the video it’s still not clear whether the keyboard is intentionally laid over a grid of PE squares, where one square corresponds to one key, or if it’s a sort of spongey plane that can click just about anywhere.
Instead, all we got was a few shots of him clicking the screen in places and crowing about how great that feature is. Is it an improvement over the original Storm? Sure. But that’s true of most any touch screen. Is it really the “huge advantage” Salmondrin claims? I have no idea. He didn’t demo the thing enough for me to tell.
A recent story on Reuters claims airlines may be struggling against a new foe in their never-ending PR war: Twitter. Where people were once making phone calls and composing strongly worded letters from the cramped discomfort of a landed airline seat, they’re now blowing off unmitigated steam on social sites like Twitter.
I opened the story because I thought it might have a nice spin on making Twitter useful. I know the service has its uses, but I find them to be few and far between for the average user. As it turns out, it’s not Twitter that seems to be doing the talking to the airlines, it’s things like Dave Carroll’s YouTube song, United Breaks Guitars. The song, which Carroll wrote after United broke a guitar and failed to take responsibility, went viral, and urged a quick response from the airline. United donated some money in Carroll’s name to a music foundation.
So Carroll makes music, United breaks Carroll’s instrument of choice, Carroll can’t make music without his instrument of choice, United donates money to help more people get better at making music – is this really the course of action we’re after? Seems to me United is trying to say, “Oh we didn’t break that guitar because we hate music. We love music. We want more people to make music.” But making music was never the issue. The issue was how some United worker mishandled Carroll’s luggage. So why is United donating to a music foundation? Why not employee dexterity training? What about emotional intelligence courses to increase worker empathy? Hell, why not just pay your handlers more for not breaking your customer’s belongings? I would take anything, anything but a donation to a god damn music foundation.
What we need to realize as a collective customer base is that United is more like the detached, loaded father who still thinks we were one big mistake than a company that knows its business. See, Dad knows what bitching sounds like, and when it happens he throws a pile of money at it. Bitch some more, get a car. Bitch some more, get a new watch. Bitch some more, get a credit card. What dad doesn’t understand are the words coming out of our mouths. He doesn’t know, or more appropriately, doesn’t care to know the real problem, so he addresses it however he sees fit, which is usually some non sequitur of epic proportions.
I realize I got a little off track there, but all of this is to say that none of our complaints, whether they’re through Twitter or on YouTube or Facebook or anything else, matter one bit if companies like United can’t figure out how to handle them. Christi Day, the woman behind the Facebook and Twitter profiles for Southwest airlines, wants you to know one thing: “The main thing that our customers need to know is that we hear them.” And it seems they do. They hear the noise we’re making, they just fail to understand the words.
You may have seen ads for the Dish Network claiming its DVR service is actually “better than TiVo.” What you may not know is that they’ve been ordered to stop selling their DVR service after losing a patent struggle with the very company they claim to be better than. As a result, a judge has ordered Dish to pay TiVo a sum of $200 million as punishment.
