Who Is Screwed If The DVRs Go Dark?

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slick1ru2

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Mar 29, 2004
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I've got hundreds of HD movies over 4.5 GBs of EHDs. Charlie better pry his wallet open vs going dark. Is it all the DVRs?

Print Story: Dish Network faces DVR shutdown, 1Q profit falls - Yahoo! News

Dish Network faces DVR shutdown, 1Q profit falls

By DEBORAH YAO, AP Business Writer
Mon May 10, 6:14 pm ET

Dish Network Corp. reported a 26 percent drop in first-quarter net income as the satellite TV company stepped up promotions to reel in customers. Its CEO also warned the company may shut down millions of digital video recorders in a dispute with TiVo Inc.
Dish CEO Charlie Ergen said Monday that he's prepared to shut down the DVRs if a court sides with TiVo in a patent-infringement case. The alternative is to pay TiVo, a pioneer in DVR technology, licensing fees.
"The only thing we can control is to shut down boxes, so we have to, obviously, if we were to lose in the court procedures," he told analysts during a conference call on the company's earnings. "We're prepared to do that. That obviously will have a material negative effect on our business."
Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said that 7.3 million DVRs could be affected and that the cost to replace and shut down the boxes could run close to $3 billion.
Moffett noted that $3 billion is significant given Dish's market value of $10 billion. He also said that Dish could lose millions of customers in weeks if the DVRs were disabled.
TiVo sued Dish in 2004 for infringement of its real-time TV pausing and rewinding features. A three-judge federal appeals panel in Washington sided with TiVo in March. Dish, the nation's second-largest satellite TV provider, has asked the full appeals court to review the case. But Dish has acknowledged that a review is unlikely.
If the appeals court doesn't grant the review, the case would return to a federal court in Texas for enforcement of an injunction on Dish's DVR boxes that infringe TiVo's patent. A federal judge would have to decide whether redesigned software for Dish's DVRs still infringe on TiVo's patents.
Moffett doesn't believe Dish will agree to pay TiVo "modest monthly fees" of $2 to $3 per subscriber to settle the case.
Meanwhile, Dish has been working on turning around operations. It has positioned itself as the low-cost option in subscription TV, and its aggressive discounting snagged 237,000 net subscribers in the quarter. That's a solid rebound from a year ago when it lost customers to DirecTV Inc. and phone companies that offer video.
But that turnaround has been costly. Dish's earnings have fallen for four quarters in a row as promotions and higher advertising costs took a big bite. Its promotions included offering one year of free service in a few cities to customers who switch from DirecTV.
In the quarter, Dish earned $230.9 million, or 52 cents per share, for the January-March period. That compares with $312.7 million, or 70 cents per share, a year ago. The cost to acquire subscribers rose by 41 percent to $412 million.
Revenue rose 5 percent to $3.06 billion from $2.91 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast a smaller profit of 50 cents per share on revenue of $3.05 billion.
Shares of Dish, which is based in the Englewood, Colo., rose 58 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $21.88.
Dish Network's latest results show that it is gaining some ground on its rivals.
DirecTV, which has about 18.7 million subscribers to Dish's 14.3 million, added only 100,000 U.S. customers in the first quarter. Cablevision Systems Corp. gained just 900 video subscribers in the period, while Comcast Corp. lost 82,000 and Time Warner Cable Inc. lost 42,000.
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Do you not know that there are multiple threads about what is going on with Dish and Tivo? Including the one about Dish winning an appeal and will have things reviewed!?!
 
Do you not know that there are multiple threads about what is going on with Dish and Tivo? Including the one about Dish winning an appeal and will have things reviewed!?!

Do you know this is perhaps the biggest thing to happen in company history? If they lose they will most likely lose enough customers to go out of business. Do you know THERE IS NO STICKY AND THEREFORE NO CENTRAL MEANS TO FOLLOW THIS ON HERE? BTW, what Dish won was simply judges looking to see of the case that was decided by a 3 judge panel should have gone to a jury instead. Not that big a deal, more like a delay that hopefully Charlie uses to scrape up 300 mil.
 
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Do you know this is perhaps the biggest thing to happen in company history? If they lose they will most likely lose enough customers to go out of business. Do you know THERE IS NO STICKY AND THEREFORE NO CENTRAL MEANS TO FOLLOW THIS ON HERE? BTW, what Dish won was simply judges looking to see of the case that was decided by a 3 judge panel should have gone to a jury instead. Not that big a deal, more like a delay that hopefully Charlie uses to scrape up 300 mil.
We have been discussing the TIVO vs. E* since the lawsuit began. You can follow the current discussion here. Here is a thread from last week. Another thread from 3/26/10. Plenty to find if you search.

The en banc approval is far more than you suggest. Look at the questions that the judges want answered. They go to the heart of the contempt citation. Obviously the majority of the Judges feel that the issues raised by Judge Rader in his dissent and E* in the en banc request merit further review. Right now it would seem that the majority feels that there was some mistake or issue with the 3-judge panel decision. __________________
 
Yup look at the date of the article, a lot has happened since then.

DVR's are safe again and will be for a long time.
 
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