dvr

Messing with TiVo's patents is a losing proposition for rival distributors of digital video recorders, as AT&T just became the most recent competitor to discover -- to the tune of at least $215 million.

TiVo is finally clicking the green"thumbs up" button for its shareholders again. The digital video recorder pioneer ended its fiscal third quarter with 117,000 more subscribers than it started with -- its first gain in four years.

Here's a nice surprise for television advertisers: Digital video recorders are actually increasing, not decreasing, the number of viewers who are watching the commercials. Nearly half of the DVR owners in the critical 18- to 49-year-old age group watch the commercials, which boosts ratings, Nielsen says.

Hulu lowered the price of its newly launched Hulu Plus subscription service by $2 to $7.99 Wednesday, just days after the online streaming video service saw its rank decline on a closely watched Internet ranking service for the month of October.

Despite a slip in its ratings dip and the loss of man-we-love-to-hate Simon Cowell, American Idol remains the most expensive show on TV for advertisers. Why are they willing to pay close to half a million dollars for a 30-second spot? Young viewers, and lots of them.

We all know Google can find and organize our online experiences and now, with Google TV, the search giant is coming into our living rooms and helping us find the entertainment we want to watch. The new Google TV experience is set to launch this fall, built in to some TVs and as a stand-alone box...

The average U.S. household will spend about $2,160 this year on home energy, which is $60 less than in 2009, according to the Alliance to Save Energy. While the drop is good news, $2,160 is still a lot of money to spend on gas and electricity, and it can be cut by up to 30% by using efficient...

A new video ad for Grasshopper is designed to penetrate your shopping consciousness even while you fast-forward through commercials. Take it as a rather feeble attempt to counter the behavior that is going to have a huge, and detrimental, effect on video entertainment via the Internet and...

Thanks to the power of the Internet, it's getting harder for companies to control how we communicate and entertain ourselves. Google's new phone runs an app that enables users to make international calls far cheaper than with any wireless carrier. That's just one sign of growing consumer influence through the Net.

Many of us -- this blogger included -- like the idea of whizzing past commercials to get back to our favorite programs sooner, but put up with having our viewing interrupted by Madison Avenue because we're resistant to the idea of shelling out a couple hundred bucks for a digital video recorder....