It's been a long, messy road, but now that TiVo's beaten a victory out of EchoStar in that seemingly-endless DVR patent lawsuit it sounds like the company is trying to exert some muscle -- it's already in talks to bring its service to Time Warner Cable, and sources have told Bloomberg the ultimate plan is to eventually collect royalties from every pay-TV provider in the US. That might sound bullying and even a little trollish, but keep in mind these patents have withstood pretty much every legal challenge EchoStar could throw at them, so TiVo's operating from a position of some certainty here -- especially since it's got license agreements with huge players like Comcast and DirecTV to use as leverage in negotiations as well. Of course, none of this solves any of TiVo's actual problems with its products, and the company's topsy-turvy balance sheet has some analysts thinking its ripe for a buyout by one of the bigs, so things could change dramatically at any minute, but for right now it sounds like your chances of getting the TiVo interface on your cable or satellite company DVR just went up, and that's almost certainly a good thing.

It's a longshot, but DISH mentioned in a court filing Monday that it is still looking for a workaround that would keep its DVR from infringing on TiVo patents, but admitting it "does not know whether a further design-around is even possible." Multichannel News pulled out the one sentence filing, although whether DISH seriously believes it can do dual tuner recording without violating the "Time Warp" patent or is just stalling for time while it looks for an antidote is still unclear.

[Picture courtesy one of many GPS accidents]

One of our favorite rumors rides again, but this time it's Dish that might be interested in buying TiVo. The new twist this time though is the motivation, and we can totally see how Dish would love to make this happen. The problem of course is that TiVo isn't interested in any such shenanigans and has gone as far as to write a poison pill into its bylaws. Our friend Davis Freeberg has been writing about TiVo's poison pill for years and more recently, at about the same time as the latest court decision came down against Dish, he saw some interesting traffic in his web server logs from none other than a Dish Network IP. No clue who the user was, but they spent some time reading up on TiVo's poison pill. Davis is no lawyer, but it is his understanding that if Dish attempted to take over TiVo, it'd cost them about $71 per share -- which comes to about $7.5 Billion. This is about seven times what the stock is actually worth and although we'd be shocked if this happened, we have to admit that crazier things have.

It's the case that never ends -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a temporary delay of the injunction and fine handed down yesterday in the EchoStar / TiVo lawsuit while it considers an appeal, meaning that DISH owners with older DVRs won't have to worry about losing their pause-and-rewind functionality at least for now. That pretty much means we're back in stasis with this one, with even more delay to come if the appeal is granted. That's cool, we needed a nap anyway.

We're a bit hesitant to call this one done given the history involved, but a federal judge in Texas has dealt DISH / EchoStar yet another serious blow in its long-standing dispute with TiVo, and this time he's taken a number of other measures that could cause EchoStar to finally rethink its workaround-litigate strategy. The big setback for EchoStar, however, is the one-two punch of $190 million in damages it's been ordered to pay TiVo and an order to disable the "infringing function" on all but 193,000 DVRs now in the hands of subscribers. The judge also found that EchoStar's recently-implemented workaround technology still violated the patent in question and, as a result, he's ordered EchoStar to inform the court before it decides to try its hand at another "design-around" of the infringing patent. For its part, TiVo says that it is "extremely gratified by the Court's well reasoned and thorough decision," while DISH / EchoStar would only say that it plans to appeal the court's decision and file a motion to stay the order with a federal appeals court.

Read - The New York Times, "Court Awards TiVo $190 Million in EchoStar Patent Case"
Read - TiVo Statement on U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Decision

XStreamHD picked the Satellite 2009 show (aren't you mad you didn't go now? we are) to demonstrate its advanced graphical user interface, moving things just a bit closer to reality after finally having some satellite delivered 1080p to show us at CES in January. A content parter or two would go even further in convincing the skeptics this has a shot to come to market, but for now we guess this will have to do.

It didn't take long for Echostar to turn its ViP 922 SlingLoaded DVR for DISH into a tru2way powered HD DVR for cable viewers ready to placeshift live and prerecorded TV, and now we've got a glimpse of what it will look like. The specs show off a 1TB hard drive ripped from its still-yet-to-launch predecessor, but new for the T2200S is a backlit capacitive touch control mounted up front, while that no numbers required touch remote the 922 flashed at CES is so far missing from the mix. It'll be at least Q4 before these go into production, but you can believe Echostar is pitching them to all willing to listen at Cable Show '09 this week, while interested customers are being advised to contact their cable provider and let 'em know they want a piece.

Want a taste of the SlingLoaded DISH Network 922 DVR (pictured), without switching to satellite? Echostar, as expected, is ready to show off a tru2way compatible version of its latest box, the T2200S, this week at the Cable Show '09. The T2200S contains the 1TB hard drive, expandable storage and of course, Sling Media's placeshifting technology ready to send live or recorded TV to your Internet connected device of choice. Since it's tru2way, it's also capable of running either the SlingGuide software, or whatever middleware is chosen by the provider, and enabling remote video diagnostics, hopefully making many truck rolls unnecessary. Like the 922, we've no price or release date yet but hopefully all that work on tru2way and M-CARD means whether or not our cable company signs up, we'll still have the choice of purchasing one at retail.

Update: Looks like the box is planned to start testing June, and go into production in Q4 of 2009, the specs from the PR are after the break. [Thanks, Justin]

Up for an investigation? We've got a curious case going on with a recent FCC filing, which sees the user manual of the recently unveiled DuoDVR ViP 922 (yeah, the SlingLoaded one) alongside images of a heretofore unseen ViP 822 DVR. Curiously, the actual FCC label corresponds with the "922," through the logo on the pictured Sling DVR definitely shows "822." So, is this just the typical step a device takes before it hits shelves in America, or is this a DVR we've never seen before? Something tells us it's far less exciting than our imaginations are leading us to believe.

Unlike DirecTV, which managed to post remarkable Q4 numbers across the board, DISH Network is only able to partially celebrate. You see, the satcaster did see profits in the fourth quarter rise some 24 percent, but at the same time, 102,000 (net) subscribers decided to head elsewhere. A recent report on the matter suggests that DISH is hurting from increased competition from main rival DirecTV, not to mention fiber-based entrants such as AT&T and Verizon. Of course, the general economic environment hasn't exactly helped matters, but DISH's smaller amount of high-def channels seems to be a magnified issue when money's tight. Oh, and if DirecTV is somehow able to integrate Sirius service into its pay-TV offering, we'd say DISH will need to think fast if it hopes to stop the bleeding of customers. Speaking of, have any of you recently jumped from DISH to DirecTV? Vice-versa?

[Image courtesy of PropertyWorld]

Well, just when it was starting to look like TiVo and DISH / Echostar may finally have put their seemingly never-ending patent dispute behind them, the two companies now look to be rekindling things in Texas this week, where they've landed in court once more to sort out that pesky patent involving TiVo's Time Warp software. As patent dispute junkies may recall, TiVo first wound up being awarded some damages in the matter way back in 2006, after which Echostar was forced to develop some workaround software that it claims no longer infringed on TiVo's Time Warp patent, which allows for recording of one channel while the user watches another. In the meantime, Echostar / DISH continued to fight back against TiVo, with things finally, apparently coming to an end when the Supreme Court ultimately denied DISH's appeal and once again awarded TiVo some $100 million in damages. Now, TiVo is alleging that the aforementioned "workaround" software does still violate its patent after all, and it's asking a U.S. District Court Judge in Texarcana, Texas to sort it out. If this latest round plays out as TiVo hopes, DISH could be forced to disable most, if not all, of its DVRs, and potentially buy new DVRs that don't infringe on TiVo's patents.

For the longest while, we couldn't figure out who let the standalone HD DVR die. To this day, we're still scrambling to find an answer, but thankfully DISH Network has stepped in to revive the niche while the search continues. The outfit's DTVPal DVR has been circulating for almost a century now (okay, just a year and change, but there's hardly a difference in the grand scheme of things), and Mr. Dave Zatz has done us the honors of unboxing one and setting it up. The unit actually doubles as a DTV converter box and an HD DVR, and Zatz found setup to be almost too painless. Everything seemed to be humming along just fine at last check, so feel free and have a look at the gallery in the read link below before pulling the trigger.

We just heard about the Sling Monitor, a quick way to move content from your Dish ViP 922 around your home, but we had to see it for ourselves. The display model at the Echostar booth was mounted way above eye-level, so we had to take some blind shots above the head. Look with your eyes, not your hands!

That funky angled screen is the just announced Sling Monitor (yes Virginia, it is HD), designed to work with the SlingLoaded ViP 922 DVR to take video anywhere in the house via WiFi. With 922, you can perform the usual Sling-type activities streaming video over the net and as many as three devices in the home, including HD over wireless. The model right now is 14.9-inch, but according to President Charlie Ergen nothing definite has been decided yet before the expected launch this summer.