Voices

Dish’s Ads to End All Ads

Dish Network Corp. plans to promote its new ad-skipping feature with, ironically enough, a television ad — that is, if broadcast TV networks agree to run the spot.

Voices

Dish Network Offers DVR That Removes Ads

Dish Network Corp. released a feature on its digital video recorder Thursday that automatically removes commercials from shows aired by major broadcast networks, threatening to seriously undercut billions of dollars in broadcast television advertising.

Voices

Four Weird Things the Internet Is Doing to Our Understanding of Television

People seem really intent these days on fusing television with the Internet. On one level this makes no sense.

News Byte

Dish, EchoStar Settle TiVo Patent Fight For $500 Million

Dish and EchoStar are paying TiVo half a billion dollars to settle a long-running patent fight over DVR technology. The two satellite TV companies will pay TiVo $300 million up front, and the remainder over 6 years, to settle suits that started in 2004. The settlement follows an April 20 legal victory for TiVo.

News Byte

TiVo Shares Sink as It Dials Back Expectations

Shares in DVR pioneer TiVo moved lower in after-hours trading today after the company posted a loss of $0.30 cents per share–two cents worse than analysts were expecting–and offered a disappointing picture of the current quarter. The fast-forward version: Service and technology revenue, down; subscription rate, down; churn, up; expenses, up; legal fees, substantial.

Voices

Motorola Sues TiVo

Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. filed a suit against TiVo Inc. in Texas Friday claiming infringement of its patents for digital video recorders.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo on Platforms, Reliability and Independence at D@CES

Twitter has crossed the threshold from Web novelty into something substantial. Now Dick Costolo’s job is to turn it into a business–one big enough to justify the sky-high valuation investors have given the messaging company.

Samsung Teams Up With Comcast, Time Warner, Hulu to Bring TV to Multiple Screens

During Samsung’s keynote at CES tonight, it invited a full cast of characters to demonstrate how it was moving TV from the living room to both tablets and phones.

Voices

Comcast Tests Combo Internet-Cable Device

Comcast Corp. is testing a new service that knits together television and the Internet, as the U.S. cable giant goes after rivals that threaten to undermine its business.

News Byte

TiVo's Q3 Isn't a Pretty Picture

Analysts were expecting bad news out of TiVo’s third-quarter results today, and the company delivered. Citing higher operating expenses, the DVR pioneer posted a loss of of $20.6 million, or 18 cents a share (three times the loss of a year ago), on revenue of $41.3 million. Consensus estimates were looking for a loss of 17 cents a share on $41.4 million in revenue. CEO Tom Rogers said the company’s distribution deals will start paying off in subscriber growth eventually, but for now, the fourth-quarter forecast was for more of the same.

Google Announces Web TV Google TV

iPad TV?