I woke up this morning to the news that we may be losing our DVR.
Huh?
Hubby mentioned that Dish Network (our satellite provider) just lost some case against TiVo and was in big trouble. So of course I wanted to know all kinds of details he didn’t know and went looking for news on the issue. Apparently sometime back around 2004, TiVo sued Dish Network for patent infringement because of their DVR systems (which we’ve had as long as we’ve had satellite). It stayed tied up in court and during that time, customers kept their service. Evidently Dish lost the first case, appealed, and it was the appeal that they just lost. They have filed a second appeal in a different court trying to prove that they have come up with some kind of work-around that no longer infringes on TiVos patent. I have no idea whether we’ll be losing our DVR in the meantime.
Obviously Dish is going to hold out as long as possible to keep from actually turning their customers’ DVR systems off because, frankly, it’s going to seriously piss off the customers. I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I actually watched live TV. We just don’t. We DVR all our favorite shows, fast forward through all the commercials (my favorite feature), and watch them when we have the time rather than whatever night stuff comes on. I love having this feature. It feels like I have a lot more control over the TV in my life this way. If Dish really does have to turn off the DVR, then they’re going to lose scads of customers. And I for one, say that they better damn well let people out of any contracts they signed because without DVR, I don’t know what the point is of us even having satellite.