Convergence between the television and the home computer — a holy grail of the digital age — has largely eluded the industry, but the living-room screen is now emerging as a key battleground for software and Internet companies.
TiVo this morning announced a multi-part deal with Best Buy that includes the development of a special version of the TiVo player that would include specialized content–oh, okay, advertising–from the electronics retailer.
TiVo shares this morning are heading lower after the company said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted a request by EchoStar to stay a contempt order imposed by a lower court pending the outcome of EchoStar’s appeal in the the patent dispute between the two companies.
TiVo shares are up sharply after hours after a federal court in Texas upheld the company’s patents in its closely watched infringement case against EchoStar.
GoDaddy’s famously risque Super Bowl ads always pull lots of eyeballs, but the company’s latest spots may have resulted in a little too much attention of the wrong kind. Entrepreneur Brian Harrell, who manages hosting services for dozens of Christian churches and faith-based organizations and uses GoDaddy to host over 160 domains, says he’s pulled several of his clients off of GoDaddy’s servers after receiving numerous complaints about the company’s racy ads that aired during Sunday’s game.
Netflix is suddenly one of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies–it just reported blowout Q4 earnings, gave a strong Q1 outlook, and its stock has doubled since November. And the company’s service is becoming ubiquitous in the home entertainment space. So why did Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt downgrade the stock this morning from Hold to Sell, estimating its fair value to be well below its current level of $35.95?
TiVo (TIVO) shares are down sharply late this afternoon, apparently on investor disappointment that the judge overseeing the company’s patent infringement case against Dish Network (DISH) did not issue a ruling today in a dispute over whether DISH had violated an injunction issued earlier this year after the company had been found to be in violation of two TiVo patents.
The MPAA has offered a deal to the Federal Communications Commission that could bring movies to cable and satellite viewers more quickly after their original release. The trade-off, though, is that the movies couldn’t be viewed by some high-definition TVs, nor could they be recorded by stand-alone TiVos.
This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers? That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings.
With technologies like TiVo and text messaging taking over the world, marketers are being forced to rethink their approach to advertising.
When a casual session with reporters following his appearance at the NBA Tech Summit turned to a la carte pricing and set-top box limitations, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin offered his usual example of what’s wrong: cable. But when he was reminded–OK, by me, since I have a DirecTV TiVo that’s functionally crippled–that cable isn’t alone when it comes to limiting services and access on set-tops or alone on programming prices, Martin insisted, “I’m not picking on cable. … Cable is the easiest analogy. You’re absolutely right; the same rules apply. Generically, our term is MVPD—multichannel video provider. It’s not just cable, it’s also satellite or telephone companies, whoever’s providing your multichannel video services. All these rules should be the same for all of them. … These are the rules that apply to everyone.” He also talked about the 700-MHz auction, bandwidth management, a la carte, competition and Sirius-XM.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do:
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
