I think that another thing to consider is whether or not a cable TV subscription is even necessary. Before DVRs, only having five or six channels was pretty lousy, but now that you can time shift shows, that's still 10 - 20 good programs each week. Even if you throw in a $9.99 Netflix subscription and 5 - 10 Amazon VOD's each month, you're still paying half of what cable costs and still have the internet for anything you missed.

My advice is to buy a used TiVo HD or series 3 with a lifetime subscription still attached. Once you own it for more than two years, it ends up being cheaper than any cable DVRs or media center PC, plus you can always resell it in the future.

We can bicker over which format is better or whose looks the best, but that doesn't matter as much as what this means to the regular consumer. Basically you can now back up your digital movies to DVD or other hard drives and consumers can play them on equipment that is found in a lot of homes.

For someone who isn't willing to engage in civil disobedience to get digital movies, they've really had very limited options when it comes to being able to burn them and play them on a DVD player. Not everybody has a PS3, but a lot of people have cheap DivX supported players to watch movies on. In the past, you had to have special (expensive) drives and discs or some kind of a direct connection at your television, but now people who want to pay, are able to buy movies off the net and transfer them to their TV without having to have the latest studio supported equipment.

It's hard to say how big this market is, but Apple's done a good job of creating demand and more and more less tech savvy people are continuing to discover online video. Apple may still be treating their TV Dongle as a hobby, but DivX is already in 40% of the players sold in the US. That's a lot more potential eyeballs to go after. Film Fresh scored a coup by being the 1st and no doubt the extra publicity should help them now. The longer that other movie rental services hold out, the better their head start.

Check out the press release that summarizes the pill at the very bottom of the document.

"If a person becomes an Acquiring Person, each Right will entitle its holder to purchase, at the Right's then-current exercise price, a number of common shares of TiVo having a market value at that time of twice the Right's exercise price. Rights held by the Acquiring Person will become void and will not be exercisable to purchase shares at the bargain purchase price. With limited exceptions, an Acquiring Person is defined as a person who acquires 15% or more of the outstanding common stock of TiVo. If TiVo is acquired in a merger or other business combination transaction which has not been approved by the Board of Directors, each Right will entitle its holder to purchase, at the Right's then- current exercise price, a number of the acquiring company's common shares having a market value at that time of twice the Right's exercise price."

Squiggles, you should go back and read the poison pill. If Dish tries to "shut TiVo down" by acquiring more than 15%, TiVo shareholders would have the right to assume 65% control over EchoStar based on their current market cap. In other words, triggering the pill would get Dish management fired not TiVo.

You are right about finding five other parties who are willing sellers though which is why I mention the possibility of killing the pill in the post. The problem with this is though, that you have to have been a shareholder prior to the judgement in order to vote. While there were a lot of people who sold their shares post judgement, anyone who held prior to judgement is likely a long time TiVo owner and one that probably isn't so fond of Dish. If you didn't like Dish and had already sold your shares would you vote to make it easier for them to strip out the poison pill? I doubt it. Dish could try again in a year or wait 2 years for it to expire, but that's assuming that they can litigate that long.

@Spin This - You are trying to change the subject. Charging for the app or using the Redbox name isn't a copyright issue, it's a trademark issue. It's important to be clear on this point b/c the artwork that you referenced (and my point RE: browsers) addressed your copyright concerns, not the trademark issues.

As far as your trademark arguments go, it seems to be a little weak. First off, Inside Redbox (and many other "Redbox" domains) have been earning ad revenue for years, even though they use the Redbox name and yet we haven't seen Redbox object once until they were recently sold to Coinstar. If they were OK with Inside Redbox website five years ago, why would a mobile app now be a problem? Using someone's name isn't automatically a trademark violation otherwise TUAW would have been shut down long ago (TUAW does charge for content via ads BTW) It comes down to whether or not there is damage being done or confusion in the marketplace. On both counts, I'd argue that this isn't the case, but you're welcome to disagree with me.

If the trademark issue is related to IR "charging" for Redbox content, then why was the free version also yanked? Furthermore, how does charging for content create a violation? Whether the app is free or paid doesn't impact someone's copyright or trademark rights.

Does Amazon owe me royalties because the charge their readers $2 to read my blog on a Kindle? It'd be nice if they did, but I don't feel entitled to that money. They're not violating any copyrights, they're using my publicly available RSS feed and/or website to deliver content on a consumer's preferred browser (the Kindle). If I don't like it, I could take down my website just like Redbox can.

Turning this into a copyright issues seems like a bit of a leap to me. Are you saying that if I use an iPhone browser to look at TUAW that I'm violating their copyrights? What happens if I view their website on my computer, do I need to pay a royalty fee to IE, Firefox or TUAW? Of course not, Redbox is the one that has secured the copyrights or else they couldn't use the movie artwork on their site. The only thing that the Inside Redbox app is doing, is skinning the website and putting it into a more attractive interface. When you consider that you can literally look at the same content on the iPhone browser, why would it make a difference, if the browser is an "app" or if it's a program built by Apple?

As far as the trademark goes, it could be an issue, but again why didn't Redbox object to the use of their name four years ago when Inside Redbox launched his site? Why haven't they objected to the RedboxCodes.com website that's been up for almost the same amount of time? Should TUAW be taken down because they use Apple in their title? Of course not. If you used the Redbox app, it's hard for me to believe that someone would mistake it as an officially sanction Redbox product.

Regardless of whether or not trademark is the issue though, Redbox should be more open with their customers. They've never cited trademark as a reason for killing a popular app and trademark could have been easily addressed by rebranding the app to something more generic instead, instead of taking it away from fans. As far as I know, this wasn't an option given to Inside Redbox. Instead they were forced to kill something without an explanation for what was wrong. Whether it's a trademark issue, a copyright issue or an issue with the free codes, it's just plain bad marketing to start going after your fans. By at least taking the time to explain their position, Redbox could have avoided alienating the very customers who've their biggest supporters so far. I realize that blogs don't have the same readership as the New York Times, but when people have spent years writing, commenting, obsessing over your brand and you can't be bothered to even have a 5 minute conversation with them, then they don't deserve to be evangelized.

You raise a good with the trademark issue, however as Lusby noted, InsideRedbox.com has been around for quite some time already. They were writing about Redbox back in 2005, before most people had even heard about them. Over the years, Redbox hasn't really communicated with the blog, but they have clearly been aware of it. If a trademark issue is why they killed the app, they should have at least be open enough to say that instead of refusing to comment on this perplexing decision. To ask them to pull the app over trademark issues, would be like asking HackingNetflix to shut down his blog because he uses Netflix in his domain. At some point, the benefit that you get from the buzz, outweighs any "damage" being down to Redbox's trademark.

Furthermore, asking Inside Redbox to change the name of the app would have been an easy thing to do, instead they are acting like an 800 lb gorilla by forcing them to take it down. If their decision to kill the fan based app was because they have an official app in progress, they should have at least released the official app first. Even if they are planning their own iPhone app, I don't understand how Redbox is harmed by having more options for their customers. There may be a very reasonable explanation for Redbox turning on their long time fans, but when they refuse to talk to their own evangelists, something is seriously wrong.

Is it just me or did the music in the video press release sound like it was lifted straight out of puerno flick?

Lets see you can pay cable $50 a month for HDTV and a lousy PVR or you can get a $9 a month Netflix subscription and an $8 a month TiVo subscription and have access to almost all of the same content using a high def over the air attenna. Maybe you won't get ESPN or Comedy central, but through Netflix you can get HBO content and a most of the cable programming not to mention the over 100,000 DVDs. If you save $30 a month this works out to be about $360 per year. Maybe that's not exciting to you, but I'm looking forward to this partnership.