DISH TO OFFER ANY SHOW AT ANY TIME (Updated)

Satellite operator DISH Network has unveiled a new DVR at the CES convention in Las Vegas that will automatically record every primetime show on the four major television networks and hold them for later viewing for as long as eight days. The DVR, called Hopper, will sport 2 TBs (terabytes) of storage, half of which [...]

OSCAR UNAFFECTED BY ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

Despite deteriorating ratings in recent years, next February’s Oscar telecast commands the same price for a 30-second commercial as it did a year ago, about $1.6-1.7 million, according to Advertising Age, which cited “a person familiar with the tone of negotiations.” This year’s Oscarcast attracted 37.9 million viewers, down from 41.7 million tuned last year. [...]

NEW SERVICE ALLOWS USERS TO CAPTURE STREAMED MOVIES

Movie studios, struggling to stay one step ahead of technology in order to keep their home-video units from being crushed, now have a new worry — an online service that allows viewers to use their computers as a DVR — to record streaming video onto their hardware to play back later. Thus, movies streamed on, [...]

TV ADS GO BUGS

Those transparent network-identifying “bugs” that have become ubiquitous over the years have now become the latest piece of TV-screen real estate to be sold to advertisers. According to Advertising Age magazine, both Fox and the CW are adding messages to the bugs, or in some case, converting them to ads (other networks are expected to [...]

STUDY: BROADCASTERS AIDED BY DVR; CABLERS, NOT SO MUCH

The DVR has slowed, if not halted, the exodus of viewers from broadcast TV to cable, a study by Nomura Securities analyst Michael Nathanson would seem to indicate. The study, covering DVR viewing over the past four years, found that viewers use their DVRs to watch broadcast TV shows via the devices about half the [...]

COMCAST TO FOLLOW CABLEVISION IN OFFERING “CLOUD” RECORDING

Following a ruling by a federal appeals court in New York that approved Cablevision’s plan to allow its subscribers to store and retrieve television shows on its remote servers, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable system, said on Wednesday that it plans to offer a similar “cloud”-based service. Comcast’s Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner told Bloomberg [...]

TIVO, DISH SETTLE LAWSUITS

Acknowledging that TiVo’s legal strategy of enforcing its DVR patents was “formidable,” satellite TV provider DISH said today (Monday) that it had reached a settlement with DISH over all remaining litigation. As part of the settlement, DISH and corporate sibling Echostar Communications will pay TiVo $500 million — $300 million now, the remainder in six [...]

TIVO SHARES SOAR ON COURT VICTORY OVER DISH

Shares of TiVo rose as high as 51 percent on Wednesday after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision that satellite broadcaster DISH Network and its parent, EchoStar Communications had infringed on TiVo’s DVR patents. It ordered DISH to disable the infringing DVRs. DISH and EchoStar later issued a statement saying that they [...]

REPORT: EBERSOL AND COMCAST CLASH OVER OLYMPICS

NBC Sports and Olympics chief Dick Ebersol is locking horns with Comcast, NBC’s new owners, over the network’s bid for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, the New York Post reported today (Tuesday). The newspaper quoted one source as saying, “This is a big test of what Dick’s role is.” Under previous owner GE, Ebersol had [...]

REPORT: MORE TV VIEWERS USING DVR’S

More and more viewers are watching TV programs after recording them on their DVRs, says a new study by Nielsen Research. According to the study released on Wednesday, the average U.S. TV viewer watched nearly 10 1/2 hours of time-shifted TV per month by the end of 2010, with a huge jump recorded in the [...]

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