TIVO cuts losses but piracy battle looms

DESPITE THE BBC SPAMTiVo posted healthy figures for its first quarter last week as it builds up a growing list of subscribers for its digital video recorder. News that the company had tripled revenues and posted a slimmer-than-expected loss prompted shares to jump 11 per cent on Wall Street.

In last year's first quarter, the company lost just over $50 million. It cut this deficit to £35million this quarter, including some hefty charges.

TiVo said it added about 42,000 new subscribers in the first quarter, but returned $48 million to AOL after plans to jointly builld an AOL TV set-top box were cancelled last month. TiVo combines with Sony in Japan to produce Sony's digital video recorder, MyCast . The company said there was strong demand for digital TV recording technology whcih was bouyed by the early launch of its next-generation digital video recorder, TiVo Series2 DVR.

The company said it expects to post a fiscal second-quarter operating loss of between $15 million and $20 million on total revenue of $10.5 million to $12 million, with around $9 million coming in from subscription revenue.

TiVo technology, however, finds itself in the dock in Los Angeles as the entertainment giants of the TV and film worlds complain that digital piracy and the particular facilty to record programmes without the adverts "threaten their livlihoods".

US networks ABC, NBC and CBS have filed a lawsuit against TiVo and fellow DVR maker Sonic Blue in protest over the new generation recorders' ability to record and send television shows over email, claiming such technology is wholesale copyright infringement and digital piracy. The entertainment industry calls the ad-skipping feature an attack on "the fundamental economic underpinnings of free television and basic nonbroadcast services," cough.

The court case kicks off in LA today (Monday). µ