[mythtv-users] Tivo sues EchoStar for... My .01 cent

robert atkinson phreaki at earthlink.net
Wed Jan 7 04:11:31 EST 2004


These opinions, and there is a lot of them is purely my own, not the 
opinions of anyone on this list that I have read the words of, as I made 
a complete attempt to take my first reactions off the list, until I had 
a Dennis Miller style rant.

I try to stay on topic as much as possible, but with something this 
slap-silly, I can't help myself.
I am so reminded of BT and their hyperlink claim, and this is what I 
wished I would have written somewhere.
This may be long, but I hope it makes some sense to someone out there.

I'm not yet an actual user of MythTV, merely a videophile who for years 
has dreamed of a system that would integrate all my digital life neatly 
in one package. I surely intend to become a user of this fine effort you 
all do on a daily basis. I see so much chatter from this list, mainly in 
the form of support, new ideas, fixes and the like.

I spoke to many a people today about this new stake that Tivo wishes 
very much to land home in every DVR arena. I have yet to find one person 
who honestly feels Tivo has a slight chance of winning.  As in most of 
these patent cases, so many factors play into someone actually keeping a 
patent, this is nothing more than an actual attempt to play out their 
patent in a court to keep their share.

Now, for my personal hogwash of the day:

1. The patent really claims several key features that I would think are 
inherent of the default functionality of the devices in question.
2.  Timeshifting in any form may be a violation of their patent, mostly 
the pausing of live tv whilst it continues to record without showing the 
video stream in question is the real meat here. The claim that a patent 
should be awarded due to the 'special wizards' at Tivo managing to coax 
a machine to record and play back a stream should only be applicable on 
their hardware.

As for 1998 it being that hard to accomplish the feat is in my opinion 
next to impossible. Main questions will no doubt come to mind, is  was 
the Linux base able to achieve this? Could you do this without special 
hardware then in 1998?

They claim, in one of the two patents that they not only control video, 
but any format that can be treated this way. The main thing was that 
video is so big, oh dear. Here comes MPEG, at it's first data rate mind 
you to save the day from huge i/o associated with these obviously very, 
very difficult tasks that consume 100% of cycles on a 3ghz cpu, and of 
which MPEG is the only possible codec to use.
Insert your own rant about how you like Nupple, or a different MPEG 
spec, like xvid, my personal fav. Sure, i'll use hardware mpeg2 which 
they don't own the patent on, but that is only because the device -gave- 
it to me like that. Force me, and i'll buy a MJPEG and use even more i/o 
to accomplish what they do with mpeg2, and do it on a 1ghz cpu. I'm 
obviously ignoring the fact that they claim you have to use their 
technique in order to accomplish any of this.

Personally, I am curious how Phillips, Sony and others feel about their 
anti-skip technology that simply buffers the mp3, or pcm data. Since 
it's digital, you can very, very easily pause, rewind and do other 
tricks with the data. Is it hard to do this to a 5 minute song today, in 
the current world? It's next to a trivial thing in a personal computer 
of almost any power, which will be next year's hand-me-downs to media 
players. They claim everything is so big, you have to do it their way, 
or you don't do it at all. If you want to pause it and keep reading the 
data, it's theirs.

Their patent claims that magnetic, optical, or any type of DRAM 
technology is to be covered as well, which I think was a shabby attempt 
to encompass all technology that could store any conceivable format of 
video, or audio. The DRAM, as I stated, is large enough in quanity 
today, that I can take an -entire- Divx, Xvid, WMV, (insert comparable 
format here) and insert it into memory allowing immediate and amazing 
i/o to be performed on that data. Who on this list doesn't have a gig of 
memory in their home pc? Two gigs? Will the 3gig gentlemen please stand up?

So, by their claim of needing a patent, I say there is no need to shift 
the huge i/o away from the CPU which they sought as a way to make their 
dream possible (unbreakable patent). Forgive me, but I -want- that data 
to hit my CPU, I don't want to play tricks with $15 components that may 
make sense in a 1998 patent, but not a lick of sense in 2004. If I wish 
to use my CPU to do tasks that Tivo thinks should be done another way 
that's fine, that's what your patent is for. But if I take a normal PC, 
with interchangable, standards based component cards, build it, and use 
it to enchance my lifestyle, or build a massive database of Seaseme 
Street, it sure isn't doing it 'your way'.

We don't want a shrink-wrapped product.
We don't want to pay premium prices for data storage.
We don't want an underpowered Main CPU driven by hardware encoding.
We don't want to pay for month to month support.
We are here because either we don't want your product, or we think there 
is a better way in doing this.

I think by now we all know:
(And i'm new to MythTV, but not to open source or collaborative open 
projects where all share the benefits.)
'-WE- have the technology to build it better'

I know that any of us are building, did build, will be building or on 
our 5th unit that kicks, smashes, outperforms, any other DVR on the 
market today. There is the nail, they need to get over with it, fine, 
make the investors happy, it didn't work. Go home and don't cause a fuss.

These opinions, and there is a lot of them is purely my own, not the 
opinions of anyone on this list that I have read the words of, as I made 
a complete attempt to take my first reactions off the list, until I had 
a Dennis Miller style rant.

Thanks if you got this far,
Robert
aka
phreaki

> K Chaloupka wrote:
>
>> note: that they specifiy MPEG as the form of compression....*/
>> /*
>
>
>
> Which MythTV currently supports...
>
> James
>
>
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