Blake Krikorian, the co-founder and CEO of Sling Media, had an interesting and frank conversation with MarketWatch. Bottom line: Krikorian asserts he has a several year lead until other services add Slingbox features, during which time Sling hopes to innovate and partner before their technology becomes a commodity. Of course, having a healthy awareness of potential pitfalls doesn’t necessarily mean you can evade them…

I highly recommend the article — it’s good reading.

Marketwatch says: “How much time does Sling Media have before your product becomes a feature, like TiVo?” I asked Krikorian, during an interview earlier this week. “A couple years, at least,” he said, with a certain acceptance that if Sling Media’s service catches on, he will not be so arrogant to try and dominate the market alone. “A technologist has to realize that one day what’s been built is a product, the next day it’s a feature,” said Krikorian. “TiVo had religious issues,” he said, suggesting the personal-video-recording pioneer failed to accept that time-shifting would be a mere add-on. Does that mean place-shifting is a feature and will one day be embedded in cable and satellite boxes too?, I asked. “It could,” he responded. “But a set-top box can get embedded into a Slingbox,” he added in jest, but certainly with the quintessential wide-eyed optimism that entrepreneurs possess.

(via PVRWire)

GM wants to build you a car-based multimedia infrastructure. They envision a system for moving content from various home and portable devices into your car for storage, organization, and presentation. Oh yeah, they want to enforce DRM by tying content to your vehicle identification number (VIN) — surely that’s a first!

GM’s Patent Application says: Apparatus are provided for navigation of multimedia content in a vehicle multimedia system having an embedded database of multimedia files. A navigation interface for controlling playback of the multimedia files and includes a processing unit, an input unit coupled to the processing unit, and a display coupled to the processing unit. The processing unit is configured to couple with the embedded database, determine a playback frequency for each of the multimedia files, and generate a playlist of multimedia files based on the playback frequency. The input unit is configured to initiate playback of the playlist. The display is configured to display the playlist.

[0030] The hard drive 32 has an embedded database containing a list of multimedia file content and stores multimedia files such as found on conventional CDs, DVDs, and other storage mediums. Multimedia files may be downloaded to the data storage device 36 from any number of devices. As best shown in FIG. 2, multimedia files may be downloaded to the data storage device 36 from a conventional CD 40, a compressed audio CD 38 that may be used to store compressed digital audio files such as MP3 files or the like, a portable storage/player device 42 such as a DVD player, a video content storage/player device 46 such as a digital video recorder (DVR), and a personal computer 44. In one exemplary embodiment, the multimedia files are stored as compressed files on the hard drive 32.

[0031] To preserve DRM protected multimedia files, a public key encoding system may be used to encrypt such multimedia files. For example, a vehicle identification number (VIN) may be used as the public key. In a wireless transfer configuration, the vehicle’s public key may be transmitted over the wireless network to the remotely connected personal computer 44, portable storage/player device 42, video content storage/player device 46, or remote data storage device 26 (FIG. 1) to be used for encrypting content. For an end-to-end DRM scheme, the originating vehicle, such as the vehicle 12 shown in FIG. 1, may authenticate using the VIN as the public key before transfer of content thereto while also preserving DRM protected content from subsequent transfer out of the vehicle 12.

This one’s pretty amusing… TiVo is hosting a match-making singles party (free drinks!) at a “hip” San Francisco hotel. I can’t decide if this is marketing genius or lunacy.

TiVo says:
Ever wish your TiVo WishList or TiVo Suggestions could score YOU the perfect match? Come flirt with the possibility of finding your own special someone, “TiVo-style.” PLUS get 2 free drinks AND be automatically entered in a raffle for one of 14 brand-new TiVo boxes with product lifetime subscription!

The event will feature TiVo’s special version of speed dating. Attendees will wear name badges that list their favorite shows and they’ll be given a short list of other TiVo fans in attendance who share their same taste in television programs. Singles can then “fast forward” through the crowd to find their TiVo-suggested match. And guests will be given “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down” stickers to privately rate their matches.

Both Sirius and XM have been expanding their sports offerings lately — no doubt to tap into the fanatical multi-gazillion dollar industry. Sirius recently concluded Winter X Games and Super Bowl XL coverage, and moves on to Winter Olympics updates beginning tomorrow. Meanwhile on XM, all 39 games of the World Baseball Classic will be broadcast and Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets a NASCAR show.

HBO continues their quest to specify what you can and cannot record to your DVR. They’ve been at the forefront of limiting our recording rights and are at it again, this time petitioning that subscription video-on-demand should be off-limits. It’s interesting that they attempt to segregate content… why should one network or type of programing be treated differently than any other? If you’re piping media into my house that I’ve paid for I intend to retain the right to copy whatever I want, whenever I want for my personal use — broadcast flag and similar legislation be damned.

Thomas Hawk reports the offical TiVo blog is offline. He’s also reporting that the blog sucks… though that may be subjective. Alex Raiano, of the unofficial TiVo Blog, raises questions as well. My expectations for TiVo’s blog weren’t very high, so I’m neither surprised nor disappointed. I always felt the blog was intended as another venue for light-weight fluff… confirmed by comment filtering and 1/3 of all sentences ending with an exclamation point.

Given how the blog is being (un)used, it’s probably better to kill it rather than continue to receive this public thrashing. Perhaps TiVo will get another author involved once the winner of the TiVo Ambassador contest is announced.

TiVo Blog says: The weblog that you’re attempting to reach is currently unavailable. TypePad recently retired one of its IP addresses. Unfortunately, this weblog has hard-coded its domain name to map to this retired address.

I didn’t originally report the Cisco eyeing TiVo rumors of last week. The story struck me as pure speculation without any concrete sources cited. Had the writer not listed Nintendo as a possible acquisition target, I might have been able to evaluate the proposition more seriously. Trust me, Nintendo won’t be bought by an American networking juggernaut. The CNET author is back today after listening in on a Cisco conference call… and I find the spokeperson’s response telling:

CNET says: When asked if DVR maker Tivo might be able to help Cisco reach this market, Giancarlo coolly dismissed rumors that Cisco might buy the company. “If I had a dollar for every company that Cisco has been speculated to buy,” he said, “it would add up to a lot of money. But honestly most of the time those speculations turn out to be untrue.”

Several weeks ago Thomas Hawk reported on a method to improve your odds when dealing with backordered Netflix movies. It goes like this… you only fill your queue with out-of-stock DVDs and presumably Netflix has no choice but to fulfill your request. Nice theory… but in reality we haven’t gotten a new movie in several days.

Like others, I’ve noticed a excessive amount of unavailable titles lately including March of the Penguins and Wallace & Grommit’s most recent exploits. I’ve been a customer since the late 90’s and can’t recall such a stock shortage. I would think with Netflix’s additional advertising revenue they’d have more inventory, not less. Then again, they could’ve picked up a ton of new subscribers with their recent commercials.

As with the original hack, The 40 Year Old Virgin was my test flick. It’s been in our queue nearly two months and was recently “upgraded” from Very Long Wait to Long Wait. So I began with an empty queue and added just that one movie. During that last several days we’ve received no email shipping alerts and no movies from Netflix — the order has remained unfilled.

This isn’t to say the original story is false… but you might consider this a warning that your mileage may vary. We’re ready to start receiving flicks again, so I’ve reconstituted our queue. I hope you appreciate the lengths I’ll go in the name of science.