My East Ky

Press Release:

DIRECTV and TiVo to Launch New HD DIRECTV DVR with TiVo Service
Wednesday September 3, 7:00 am ET

EL SEGUNDO and ALVISO, Calif., Sept. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — DIRECTV, Inc. (Nasdaq: DTV - News), the nation’s leading satellite television service provider, and TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO - News), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), announced today that they have extended their current agreement, which includes the development, marketing and distribution of a new HD DIRECTV DVR featuring the TiVo® service, as well as the extension of mutual intellectual property arrangements.

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Under the terms of the non-exclusive arrangement, DIRECTV and TiVo will work together to develop a version of the TiVo® service for DIRECTV’s broadband-enabled HD DVR platform. The product will support the latest TiVo and DIRECTV features and services, including TiVo’s Universal Swivel Search and TiVo KidZone. TiVo will develop the new HD DVR for an expected launch in the second half of 2009.

DIRECTV will continue to develop and offer its own portfolio of industry leading set top boxes as primary offerings to both new and existing customers. This new TiVo box will be offered as an alternative choice to those DIRECTV customers who would like to add TiVo to a full line up of DIRECTV services.

“We have had a very successful history with DIRECTV. Together we brought the TiVo experience to millions of DIRECTV customers and now we look forward to launching a next generation product that uses TiVo’s latest features to truly showcase DIRECTV’s broad selection of high-definition programming — all stitched together with the elegance of TiVo’s renowned user experience,” said Tom Rogers, TiVo’s CEO and president. “This agreement demonstrates our continued embrace of mass distribution opportunities in cooperation with major multichannel operators who recognize the value of giving their customers a choice of compelling user experiences.”

Like prior products developed by TiVo and DIRECTV, the new HD offering will be marketed and sold by DIRECTV nationally to its entire customer base as part of its growing portfolio of brand name video offerings. Specific consumer pricing and packaging will be announced in conjunction with DIRECTV’s launch of the product.

“As the industry’s content and technology leader, DIRECTV has a long-standing reputation for developing innovative, advanced products and services, including our highly successful series of DVRs and HD DVRs,” said Chase Carey, president and CEO, DIRECTV, Inc. “We will continue to work with TiVo and make this new product available to all new and existing DIRECTV customers who may want to add TiVo on top of our industry leading experience.”

DIRECTV and TiVo began their relationship in 2000 with the launch of the first DIRECTV DVR with TiVo service. In April 2006, the companies announced an extension of their commercial and advertising relationship and those commercial and advertising capabilities are further extended, and now include the new HD platform. DIRECTV and TiVo also recently deployed a software update to existing DIRECTV with TiVo boxes, which enables new features like DIRECTV’s Remote Booking.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About DIRECTV, Inc.

DIRECTV, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTV - News), the nation’s leading satellite television service provider, presents the finest television experience available to more than 17.1 million customers in the United States and is leading the HD revolution with more than 130 HD channels — more quality HD channels than any other television provider. Each day, DIRECTV subscribers enjoy access to over 265 channels of 100% digital picture and sound, exclusive programming, industry-leading customer satisfaction (which has surpassed all national cable companies for eight years running) and superior technologies that include advanced DVR and HD-DVR services and the most state-of-the-art interactive sports packages available anywhere. For the most up-to-date information on DIRECTV, please visit directv.com.

About TiVo Inc

Founded in 1997, TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO - News) pioneered a brand new category of products with the development of the first commercially available digital video recorder (DVR). Sold through leading consumer electronic retailers, TiVo has developed a brand which resonates boldly with consumers as providing a superior television experience. Through agreements with leading satellite and cable providers, TiVo also integrates its DVR service features into the set-top boxes of mass distributors. TiVo’s DVR functionality and ease of use, with such features as Season Pass® recordings, WishList® searches, and TiVo KidZone, have elevated its popularity among consumers and have created a whole new way for viewers to watch television. With a continued investment in its patented technologies, TiVo is revolutionizing the way consumers watch and access home entertainment. Rapidly becoming the focal point of the digital living room, TiVo’s DVR is at the center of experiencing new forms of content on the TV, such as broadband delivered video, music and photos. With innovative features such as TiVoToGo(TM) and online scheduling, TiVo is expanding the notion of consumers experiencing “TiVo, TV your way.®” The TiVo® service is also at the forefront of providing innovative marketing solutions for the television industry, including the Stop||Watch(TM) commercial and program rankings service, a unique platform for advertisers and media companies. The Company is based in Alviso, California.

TiVo, the TiVo logo, Season Pass, WishList, Swivel, Stop||Watch, TiVoToGo, and ‘TiVo, TV your way.’ are trademarks or registered trademarks of TiVo Inc. or its subsidiaries worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to, among other things, the timing and nature of future development and distribution of DIRECTV DVRs with TiVo service, the future availability of interactive advertising capabilities and future negotiations between TiVo and DIRECTV on other product initiatives. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as, “believe,” “expect,” “may,” “will,” “intend,” “estimate,” “continue,” or similar expressions or the negative of those terms or expressions. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in or indicated by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially include delays in development, competitive service offerings and lack of market acceptance, as well as the other potential factors described under “Risk Factors” in DIRECTV’s public reports and TiVo’s public reports, including each company’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent current and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Each of DIRECTV and TiVo cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect an analysis only and speak only as of the date hereof. Each of DIRECTV and TiVo disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Got to say I am looking forward to this. The DirecTV HD DVR is a fine working machine, but there is nothing that comes close to an original TiVo. One does have to wonder about a couple of things. Like what the inital price is going to be? I paid close to $300 to upgrade to the DirecTV HR 21-700. Also I hope DirecTV continues to release upgrades to their HR series of DVR’s. For example the media share is still in “beta”.

As stated in a earlier post I recently upgraded to high definition with DirecTV, and with that comes a new receiver. I previously owned an Rca TiVo model dvr and loved it but the only downfall is it was not high definition capable. There is a high definition capable receiver with TiVo available but it will soon be useless when directv completely converts overt to mpeg 4 I believe.

If you have never used a TiVo unit before you don’t know what you’re missing it completely changed the way I watched TV. I was now able to watch TV on my schedule and not the networks. Once you have it you will never want to go without it.

I was kind of hesitant to get a non TiVo unit but unless I wanted to waste money on a box that was going to be useless a year or so from now I decided to go for the new DirecTV models, you can still get the TiVo units on eBay but all your doing is wasting your money.

First the picture quality, as I said in a earlier post the high definition channels are amazing crystal clear, although some stations are still up converting the signal and are not true hd yet, but only time will help that as new shows will be shot in high definition like the new season of survivor coming up that will be shot in high definition for the first time. The only complaint I have related to picture quality is when a show is not true hd you have to hit a “format” button on the remote to adjust the picture to adjust to the screen. For example my LCD TV is of course a wide screen and when I am switching channels I routinely have to hit the format button on the remote to fill the screen. Kind of annoying but it’s not that bad. After watching high definition programming your standard definition is going to look like crap. Not that the picture quality is bad but your basically going from night to day with the two.

Now on to the audio. Unfortunately I do not have a home theater system (yet) but the Hr21-700 produces sound that is clear and I have no complaints in that department. There was an issue a couple of months ago where the audio would go out of sync but an update by DirecTV resolved that issue.

Coming from a TiVo unit to this was kind of frustrating at first but that quickly disappeared after a week or so learning the functions. Like how to setup a “season pass” to record a entire season of a show. So far the Hr21-700 has not let me down in that department it’s basically a set it and forget thing. Plus as en extra benefit you can now go to directv.com and schedule shows to record on their website. For example say you were on vacation or a business meeting out of town or whatever you could log into directv.com then go to the tv schedule guide and select shows to record there and select which receiver ( if you have more than 1 DVR) to record to and it will record it for you.

Another nice feature that DirecTV is doing to compete with the cable companies is VOD Video on Demand. They are drawbacks as I see this the way DirecTV does it. DirecTV uses your high speed internet connection to download shows to your DVR. So a high speed connection is a definite must, I have 6meg DSL from AT&T and it takes about 15min or so to download a 30min show. The way I usually do it is let it start downloading and let it get to about 2-5% before I start watching it so it’s downloading while I’m watching. Or you could just set it to download overnight or when you’re not home during the day. I would say anything below a 3meg connection would be painful. Now you can certainly bet your ISP provider is not going to like this especially if they are millions of users doing this. As a matter of fact I read the other day that AT&T is going to (trial run) a pay per byte billing this fall. That is where AT&T as your ISP will give you say 100 GB (and that number is just thrown out there by me) and if you go over 100 GB for the month guess what? You will get billed for every byte, megabyte, and gigabyte or however they want to do it you go over. Just like your cell phone. And I think we all know how painful it can be when you go over your minutes. So no more unlimited internet downloading.

For the last part of the review I just wanted to comment on the Media share option that the HR21-700 has. Media share is a great option and for the time being has actually saved my money as I did ave plans to build a HTPC to play videos and music and pictures. If you have the HR21-700 connected to your home network and have a halfway decent Pc you can watch videos, listen to your mp3 collection or watch a slide show of your pictures with music playing. Now I say halfway decent pc because your “main” pc or server is supposed to be a VIV computer. But I can tell you one is not required, my pc is a Intel dual core 2ghz with 2gb of ram in a raid 0 setup. You need a halfway decent pc to Trans code video and music. Also the default setup is supposed to work with windows media player but you are very limited by this, and a great alternative application is Tversity.

I’m not going to go into the details about setting everything up and configuration but with tversity you can play just about every video format out there plus almost every audio codec there is. The HR21-700 is currently limited to only playing mpeg2 ( I believe ) and what tversity does is trans code your original video which maybe in xvid or divx format into mpeg2 on the fly being able to play through your HR21-700. It is a great feature to have available, but it is still in beta so they are some bugs still to be worked out. Tversity is currently free so I recommend everybody grab a copy while you can. This feature alone makes the $300 hit to upgrade to high definition a little easier to swallow.