Satellite TV and video-on-demand company DISH Network this morning announced today that Joseph P. Clayton has been named the company’s president and chief executive officer and has been appointed to its board of directors, effective June 20, 2011. The company’s iconic co-founder, Charles Ergen, will step down from his operational role at the helm of the company but remain as chairman of DISH Network.
Clayton previously served as chairman of Sirius Satellite Radio, from November 2004 through July 2008, and served as CEO of Sirius from November 2001 through November 2004. → Read More
DISH Network and EchoStar this morning announced that they’ve agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle all of their ongoing patent litigation with the digital video recorder company.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, DISH and EchoStar will initially cough up $300 million, with the remaining $200 million distributed in six equal annual payments between 2012 and 2017. → Read More
According to an AP report, Dish Networks, the soon-to-be new owner of Blockbuster, is keeping the leases on 500 of Blockbuster’s physical stores. The reasoning, while on the surface inscrutable, will give Dish a physical presence and allow it access to Blockbuster’s assets and brand to sell its own satellite TV service to consumers. → Read More
DISH Network this morning announced that it was selected as the winning bidder in the bankruptcy court auction for substantially all of the assets of Blockbuster, which went belly up in September 2010.
DISH’s winning bid was valued at approximately $320 million, but after adjustments for available cash and inventory and others, the company expects to end up paying approximately $228 million in cash to acquire Blockbuster. → Read More
At this week’s Google I/O Conference, the company carefully articulated its vision of the world. There’s Apple in one corner, carefully controlling its ecosystem, rejecting Flash, and conjuring images of an Orwellian Big Brother. As the “one man, one company, one device” (Vic Gundotra’s words) becomes more powerful, Google is trying to posit itself as the other choice. The more “open” choice. Whether or not you agree with Google’s goggles, it’s a very smart and well defined message, creating an us vs. them environment and reinforcing the mantra “Don’t be evil.”
This point of “openness” was driven home on Thursday, during the I/O keynote, when Gundotra and Co. unveiled the highly anticipated Google TV project. Unexpectedly (and to great effect), Schmidt took to the stage at the end to introduce Google TV partners, a panel of high power CEOs (Best Buy, Sony, Intel, Dish Network, Logitech, Adobe). Together, those companies represent a market capitalization of roughly $200 billion ($350 B when you add Google). Their attendance wasn’t really necessary— there was plenty of flash in the presentation (no pun intended)— but it punctuated Google’s message: Google is open, inclusive and powerful and we are definitely not an army of one. Let’s just say, I don’t think it was a coincidence that Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen was seated next to Schmidt. (Bonus: a quick video interview with CEO of Sony & Best Buy ahead.) → Read More
TiVo is having a very rough morning.
A federal appeals court stated today that it will revisit a digital-video recorder patent dispute between TiVo and both Dish Network and EchoStar. TiVo has sued the companies back in 2004 over its patented DVR technology back when the two were still a single company.
They won the suit, but the court has now decided to reconsider its verdict, which is a bit of a cold shower for the company.
Today’s decision pushed TiVo shares down as much as 36 percent. → Read More
The battle between Dish and TiVo rages on. As reported by Bloomberg, a judge has ruled that Dish and EchoStar must pay TiVo around $200 million for continuing to provide DVR service to its customers after being told to stop because it was violating TiVo’s patents. Dish and EchoStar plan to appeal the ruling.
The new ruling brings Dish and EchoStar’s total payments to TiVo to around $400 million in damages and other fees after a five year legal battle. In this latest round, Dish and EchoStar say they tried to work around TiVo’s patents, but a judge ruled that they had failed to do so. The $200 million figure is based on a $2.25 per month royalty for every Dish DVR user, extending from April 2008, when an appeals court reaffirmed TiVo’s patent, to July 1 2009. → Read More
Deja Vu? Yeah, EchoStar paid TiVo over a $100 million a couple of years ago for infringing on TiVo‘s DVR patents. But it seems that EchoStar didn’t follow the court’s orders to disabling all the Dish DVRs that infringed on TiVo’s patent. Now they have to pay. → Read More
Dish Network lost a bunch of subscribers at the end of last year but the company is still in the black even with losing 104,000 subs. Dish’s contract with AT&T is now up and it seems that all those peeps that got roped into deals are now dropping the service after the contract expired. Now, don’t think the company is washed up ’cause at the end of last year, Dish still had 13,678,000 subscribers and reported a 1% revenue increase from the previous year. → Read More
I’ll be honest. I’ve never met anyone in real life who subscribes to DISH Network, but I’m fairly convinced that the company does exist and probably turns a profit. If you happen to be a DISH subscriber and you have one of the HD packages, then you, my friend, are in for what appears to be some sort of treat. Tomorrow, DISH will start rolling out a big, fat update to all of its MPEG-4 HD DVR boxes. The update will allow the boxes to display high definition content in glorious 1080p resolution. Says DISH, “By early August, all DISH Network customers with MPEG-4 HD DVR receivers will have the only set-top boxes in the nation enabled to display 1080p content, allowing them to maximize the full potential of their 1080p-compatible HDTV sets.” So if you’re really into HD, this might get you a little boner-y. The update is set to dovetail with DISH’s TurboHD service, which is an “all-HD suite of programming packages” and the recent launch of the company’s Echo XI satellite. DISH currently offers 114 national HD channels and plans to have 150 by year’s end. → Read More
EchoStar (now known as DISH Network Corporation) was dealt yet another blow in its ongoing patent battle with Tivo as the U.S. Appeals Court ruled against them. The dispute involves EchoStar’s alleged infringement of Tivo’s TimeWarp patent, which allows users to record one program while watching another. Tivo applied for the patent in 1998, and it was granted in 2001. In 2004 Tivo successfully sued EchoStar for its Dish Network DVR, which provided very similar functionality to Tivo’s product. EchoStar was ordered to pay Tivo $73.9M in damages. The company has subsequently appealed the ruling a number of times, but has not been successful in getting it overturned. The Dish Network has advised customers that the latest rulings will have no effect on their DVR service, stating that they have deployed “next-generation DVR software” that will not infringe on Tivo’s patent. The company has also declared that it intends to appeal the latest ruling all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dish has a lot more lawyer money than TiVo, and it is going to drag this thing out as long as it can. Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection was the first site to report the news. → Read More
If you’re a Slingbox owner who happens to be of the opinion that there just aren’t enough ads on television already, you are weird. You also might be seeing even more ads if Sling Media puts into play the technology described in a recent patent. The patent basically entails using various methods of delivering ads including video overlays, pre- and post-roll ads, pop-up windows, and even serving ads to you via “a phone call, a fax, or the postal service.” The ads would be targeted to you based on what you’re watching at the time, so you’d get ads for golfing websites while you’re watching a golf tournament, for instance. → Read More
