i have a hard time w/the price too but tivo could be a good fit for sister company echostar technologies, which already offers STBs and some nice software to the pay TV industry. as for comcast paying anywhere that kind of price – i’d be shocked to see that considering comcast already has its own sizeable software groups. frankly i don’t think anyone would value tivo as high as dish now would…

So how much is DISH in for? No one knows for sure, but I can take a guess.

I believe the court will order DISH to pay at least $300M. The additional fees would come from the period of mid 08 – present. (Fee of $1.25 per DVR per month determined by the jury. Multiplied by 3 because DISH is in contempt of court during this period.) With the latest $103M ruling, I estimate DISH will owe TIVO $400M.

There is an outstanding injunction from the court, ordering DISH to turn off 4M – 7M boxes in the next 30 days. DISH was granted a stay by the higher appeals court, but this injunction puts DISH in a very bad spot. If DISH had to turn off millions of boxes, it could bankrupt the company. DVR users are most likely their highest paying subscribers. There is an enormous amount of pressure on DISH to do a licensing with TIVO.

The jury assessed TIVO’s licensing fee at $1.25 per box per month. It is debatable whether DISH would have to pay fees on 4M or 7M DVRs (read the court transcripts). If DISH is faced with licensing deal or shutting off DVRs, TIVO will have enormous leverage to jack up the fee. My estimate is $3.75 per box per month.

Low estimate: 4M * $1.25 => $60M per year
High estimate: 7M * $3.75 => $315M per year

Licensing fees for 5 years would range from $300M to $1.6B.

If you believe my analysis, DISH is in for $700M-$2B over the next 5 years. As of 6/10/2009, TIVO’s market cap is $1.15B. So, DISH is probably thinking about buying TIVO for $1.5B – $2B.

Personally, I don’t see DISH buying TIVO. If DISH put in an offer, I think Comcast would come in and outbid DISH.

Hopefully at 500$ an hour the lawyers could come up with more than a google search.

I agree, who knows what it means. Up to each of you to decide what you to make of it, but no denying that it’s interesting though FWIW – This search result isn’t the reason why I think Dish will make a play here. It does help to confirm my conspiracy theories, but my thesis is actually based on a lot of things that I didn’t even bring up in my post.