By Anick Jesdanun, Technology Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --TiVo wants to help you skip TV commercials.
With one press of a button on the remote, TiVo's new digital video recorder will skip the entire commercial break. That's quicker than the 30-second forward feature found on previous TiVos. On the new TiVo Bolt, TiVo will tag the start and end of commercial breaks so that viewers can skip that section when watching on their recordings. The feature will work with about 20 over-the-air and cable channels, including the major broadcast networks, mostly during prime-time hours.
Satellite TV provider Dish has had a similar feature on its Hopper DVR, which has prompting lawsuits from several TV channels. Dish has been settling them as part of broader agreements for rights to include the channels on Dish's lineup. In an agreement with CBS, for instance, Dish's commercial-skipping feature is blocked for the first seven days after a program is broadcast on a CBS-owned station.
The San Jose, California, company hopes to avoid legal problems by leaving it to users to enable the feature, said TiVo Inc. Vice President Jim Denney.
"We're not changing the underlying content," Denney said in an interview. "We're not auto-eliminating commercials. The user does it. We're giving users a tool to get through their content more quickly."
The TiVo Bolt also has a "quick mode" that plays back recordings 30 percent faster. The pitch on the audio is adjusted using software so that it won't sound odd. With this and the commercial skipping, it will be possible to watch an hour-long show in roughly a half-hour.
Other features include support for video in Ultra HD, or 4K, resolution when channels start offering that quality.
As with past models, the TiVo Bolt offers a unified search of both traditional channels and streaming-video services. Ask for "How I Met Your Mother" for reruns on local stations plus video on Netflix. You can watch streaming video such as Hulu on TiVo, but the commercial skipping and quick playback work only with regular recordings. The 4K feature works with both recordings and streaming services that offer it.
The TiVo Bolt starts at $300 and includes one year of free service, which provides programming data and other information needed to tap the device's full capabilities. After that, service costs $15 a month. TiVo's starting price was cheaper in the past, but people had to pay for monthly service right away.
Wednesday's announcement comes a day after Google Inc. began selling upgrades to its $35 Chromecast video-streaming device. It also launched a new Chromecast model that can be plugged into speakers to play music from a phone or an Internet service. A few weeks ago, Amazon.com Inc. refreshed its streaming-TV devices. The new Fire TV, selling for $100 and shipping next week, will also support 4K video streaming. Apple Inc. is also coming out with an Apple TV update in October.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More