TiVo and EchoStar head into the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this Thursday to continue arguing their ongoing patent dispute. The docket is pretty tight, so the hearing should be a brief affair.

An unexpected benefit in attending the pre-DigitalLife event last week was spotting Kunal Madhukar’s badge (and the person attached). Kunal is the Bear Stearns analyst covering digital media — In fact, I’ve quoted him a few times here on ZNF. Kunal has kindly provided me with docket details and, if time permits, I may sit in on the hearing. I doubt they’ll allow mobile blogging or even photographs, but I’ll be sure to draw stick figures of the participants. As far as the case goes, Kunal believes the Final Order could take “six months or more” and finds it “difficult to handicap [the] outcome.”

I realize things appear a bit muddied on my end: EchoStar will be my employer shortly and I’m a TiVo customer… However, I don’t presume to be a patent or legal expert - which hopefully limits me to covering the facts of this landmark case without bias.

After working 13 days on the road, followed by 48 hours of R&R (Halo 3-style), I’m ready to get back to some blogging. It’s obviously been a very exciting couple weeks at Sling Media (my place of employment), so here’s a quick roundup of September news in chronological order:

Sling Collaborates with DirecTV on NFL Supercast

• jkOnTheRun: Hands on with Sling & DIRECTV SuperCast. It Rocks!
• Amazon Current: Hands-On with DirecTV Supercast

EchoStar to Acquire Sling Media

• Forbes: Shifting Places
• paidContent: Sling-DISH Interview, Blake Krikorian
• Sling Community: Blake Krikorian Talks, The EchoStar Purchase

Introducing Slingbox SOLO

• CNET: Sling Media Slingbox Solo
• Gizmodo: Slingbox Solo Hands On, Slinging a Single HD Source Wherever You Are

Slingbox PRO Heads Across the Pond

• PC Advisor: UK gets Slingbox with Freeview tuner & HD
• Pocket-lint: Sling Media Slingbox PRO Review

SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian Released

• ZDNet: Sling Media announces SlingPlayer for S60 devices
• Symbian Guru: SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian S60v3 Devices!
• Symbian in Motion: SlingPlayer Mobile Officially Released for S60

SlingPlayer Mobile for Blackberry Under Development

Yes, it’s true - we’re exploring Slinging to the Blackberry platform and feel good with our progress. I’ll go ahead and quote myself from the Sling Community:

You wouldn’t believe some of the cool stuff going on in our labs! But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves… Blackberry support, as with any new Sling platform, is a major engineering undertaking and it’ll be some time before we have a product suitable for release.

Bonus Coverage: We’ve also refreshed our Sling Media web site, launched a Clip+Sling teaser, and intend to fully support Palm’s new Centro.

Combination Will Create Industry-Leading Digital Media Solutions Provider

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. and FOSTER CITY, Calif., September 24, 2007 – EchoStar Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) announced today that it has agreed to acquire Sling Media, Inc., a privately-held digital lifestyle products company. EchoStar, through its DISH Network^®, is the third largest pay-TV provider in the United States. The transaction values Sling Media at approximately $380 million and is payable in cash and EchoStar options. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2007.

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There’s news out of Sling Media today, and since I don’t work for the company (unlike Dave), I feel perfectly justified in covering it.

Sling is collaborating with DirecTV on a new offering called Supercast, which brings online streams of NFL games to the Web every Sunday. Subscribers to the DirecTV/NFL SuperFan package can access these streams for free, though it appears you will only get access to the games available in your geographic region. (Hmmm– isn’t “placeshifting” the whole idea behind Sling?) Sling designed the SuperCast interface (further updates promised soon) and is hosting the service for DirecTV. More details direct from Dave on the Sling Community forum.

What’s extremely interesting about this news is that it represents the first time Sling has ventured beyond the hardware biz into direct content delivery. The new service does not require a Slingbox or Sling software. And, in working with DirecTV, Sling shows new media and old media distribution are growing ever closer. Maybe there are more partnerships to come?

One other note about the news from a satellite-vs.-cable point of view: it looks like the battles over sports content are not going to die down any time soon. What’s next? Is Comcast going to bring Donovan McNabb on door-to-door sales calls?

At the CEDIA Expo, which caters to the high-end home theater (installer), two new satellite DVRs were on display…

DirecTV HR21 Pro

TVSquad writes: a rack mountable unit ($1000) capable of recording 100 hours of HD programming in MPEG-4. It also packs an optical HDMI port for running long fiber optic cables without signal loss.

Dish Network ViP722

Gizmodo writes: now totalling 55 hours’ worth of 1080i or 720p HD video, or 350 hours of standard def. Overall the 722 is an incremental upgrade over the 622

DirecTV’s Internet-connected pay-per-view service is now in beta. Like Amazon Unbox on TiVo, a networked set-top box (HR20 in this case) can pull from a library of content via the Internet. Download speed is variable (obviously) but media can be played back while coming in, and some content does expire. Hit this DBSTalk thread for more details. Not sure how big a selling point this is (compared to Sunday Ticket and Superfan), but it’s a “nice to have” - especially if they load it up with HD content. Speaking of which, where’s my Unbox in HD?

Sirius unveiled a whole slew of new devices and services yesterday. Three in particular caught my attention:

Stiletto 2

I’m a gadget guy and I like portables, so the WiFi-enabled Stiletto appeals to me. I found the first generation slightly too large, so this 25% size reduction has resulted in a sleeker package. Both Stiletto models outshine my XM Helix in the beauty department, and more importantly, they offer a couple of home docking solutions. Interestingly, Steven Chalker, the only person I know who regularly used a Stiletto intends to sell it and stream Sirius to a TMobile MDA instead. (Was Zing was involved with v2? Surely not v3…) Expect the Stiletto 2, with souped up Altec Lansing headset, to ship this fall @ $350.

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Speaking publicly on the recent Patent Office decisions… Both TiVo and EchoStar appear to hope for the best while appeasing (or is that calming?) their stock holders via the press.

TiVo:

“The patent office affirmed the majority of the claims of the patent including two that the jury found that EchoStar infringed,” he said. “The finding of infringement of one claim is all TiVo needs to prevail against EchoStar. “We do not believe that the ongoing process of re-examining the other claims will have any impact on the appeal of the jury’s determination that Echostar infringed on TiVo’s patent,” he said.

EchoStar:

“Based on our current analysis of the case, including the appellate record and other factors, we believe it is more likely than not that we will prevail on appeal,” EchoStar said.