TiVo's Patents

TiVo finally got some new patents issued, which help protect the things that make TiVo what it is. Among them:

• For the "Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System," the cool interaction design feature where it "corrects" your overshoot on rewind+stop on the remote control. More evidence of how patentable good interaction design is.
• For aspects of the "trickplay" bar, the green status bar that shows where you are in the video stream when you use the remote control. Another UI innovation.
• "Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data": aspects of the DVR ability to pause, rewind, and ff in cached live TV.
• "Television Viewer Interface System to TiVo" apparently "describes several aspects of the intuitive TiVo user interface." This is the one I most want more details on, of course. None to be had in the press release.
• And this one could be very important: "TiVo has also acquired the exclusive right to license and enforce U.S. patent number 5,241,428 entitled Variable-Delay Video Recorder known in the industry as the Goldwasser Patent. Filed in March 1991, the Goldwasser Patent is one of the earliest patents regarding digital video recorders of which TiVo is aware. This patent covers devices that permit the simultaneous recording and playback of video material with a variable time delay between recording and playback of a given video program segment."

See it here: TiVo.com | TiVo Press Releases.