SAN FRANCISCO -- Warner Bros. is willing to significantly alter its “windowed business” by allowing home viewing of movies very soon after theatrical release, subject only to considering them protected against piracy, said Senior Vp Dean Marks during an Intel Developer Forum panel here on digital copy protection. He said the studio would stop short of taking up Intel’s suggestion that such releases could be simultaneous.
While Intel is confident it can overcome the Achilles heel of LCoS and produce chips in high volumes and acceptable yields, the company is still 3-4 months away from making any further statements about the technology’s suitability for manufacture. So said Louis Burns, vp & gen. mgr. of Intel’s Desktop Platforms Group, after his keynote Tues. at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, in which he outlined his company’s vision for LCoS and other future products in the “digital home.”
Warner Bros. is willing to alter significantly its “windowed business” by allowing home viewing of movies very soon after theatrical release, subject only to considering them protected against piracy, said Senior Vp Dean Marks during an Intel Developer Forum panel in San Francisco on digital copy protection. He said the studio would stop short of taking up Intel’s suggestion that such releases could be simultaneous.
TiVo was granted its summary judgment by U.S. Dist. Court, Boston, in its PVR patent dispute with Pause Technology (CED Feb 12 p5) because the court found TiVo had “the better argument with respect to at least 2 disputed claim terms,” a text of the decision said.
TiVo won a favorable summary judgment ruling in a patent infringement suit filed in 2001 by Pause Technology. The ruling that TiVo PVRs don’t infringe on Pause’s patent was entered by U.S. Dist. Court Judge Patti Saris in Boston. TiVo said it will file a motion asking that the court declare the dispute an “exceptional” case, which would require Pause to repay TiVo’s
The CBS telecast of the Super Bowl halftime show in which singer Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s costume, exposing her breast, drew “the biggest spike in audience reaction TiVo has ever measured,” TiVo said Mon. TiVo, citing an analysis of “aggregated data” from a sample of 20,000 households, said viewership of the halftime incident jumped 180% “as hundreds of thousands of households used TiVo’s unique capabilities to pause and replay live television to view the incident again and again.” The incident drew protests from parent’s group and prompted FCC Chmn. to promise a quick investigation. Powell called it “a classless, crass and deplorable stunt.”
The first hardware using Digital Interactive Systems Corp. (DISC) technology, which allows gamers to play PC games on their TVs without the need for a compute, as expected was unveiled by Apex Digital and Alienware at CES late last week. Apex’s hardware, scheduled to ship in March, is the ApeXtreme DVD player/DISCover Game Console, while Alienware’s is the Media Center PC and DISCover Game Console.
EchoStar doesn’t believe it infringed any TiVo patents, a spokesman said after TiVo said Mon. it had filed suit against EchoStar charging it had violated the “Time Warp” patent that allows users to pause live TV. The spokesman didn’t say whether EchoStar planned to file a countersuit, but said the company “intend[s] to defend vigorously against the lawsuit.”
EchoStar doesn’t believe it infringed on any TiVo patents, a spokesman said after TiVo said Mon. had filed suit against EchoStar charging it had violated the “Time Warp” patent that allows users to pause live TV (CD Jan 6 p8). The spokesman didn’t say whether EchoStar planned to file a countersuit, but said the company “intend[s] to defend vigorously against the lawsuit.” Separately, An EchoStar spokesman confirmed reports that the company had sued Viacom in U.S. Dist. Court, San Francisco, over CBS rebroadcast rights, including coverage of the Super Bowl Feb. 1. But he said the companies had reached a temporary agreement to continue negotiations through next week. EchoStar said Viacom had conditioned the agreement on EchoStar’s carriage of additional programming. “We consider that to be TV extortion, saying we [can’t run] the Super Bowl… unless we agree to carry other channels. We think that’s part of the public airwaves at this point,” the spokesman said. The company is pleased that an agreement was reached for additional negotiation time, he said: “It should allow us to hold meaningful conversations.” An industry official said it was unlikely EchoStar timed the filing of its lawsuit to coincide with DirecTV’s announcement that it had reached an agreement with CBS (CD Jan 8 p10).
RealNetworks said it was rolling out RealPlayer 10 software that features a multichannel codec and couples support for MPEG-4 compression with the national debut of an online music store.