TiVo To Link Hulu With DVR

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said video Web site Hulu.com is the last "major aggregator" his company aims to work with to increase programs for the TiVo digital video recording service. "Hulu will have to come to terms with the big screen and get themselves on the television set," Rogers said in an interview in Cannes on Wednesday. "When they decide as a policy matter that's something they'd like to do, we want to bring them to the TV." Hulu, whose owners also include General Electric's NBC Universal and Walt Disney, shows free television programs and movies on its Web site. The clips contain advertisements that can't be skipped, while TiVo is often criticized by the ad industry for allowing users to skip commercials. TiVo, the pioneer of the digital video recorder, has already formed such partnerships for online content with Netflix, Amazon.com and YouTube, Rogers said. The company is expanding its offerings of shows, movies and videos as consumers increasingly migrate online, and is seeking deals with small and medium-size cable operators. RCN, a cable operator in cities including New York, Boston and Chicago, said it would offer TiVo recording devices to its residential and small-business subscribers.Rogers said TiVo lost subscribers when pay-TV service DirecTV canceled a contract with TiVo. DirecTV, the second-largest pay-TV service after Comcast, re-entered that contract when Liberty Media took control of the company last year, and this will "help fuel our growth," Rogers said. TiVo said it will take action against companies that infringe its patents for digital recording. "The fact is we own the core technology" for the digital video recorder "and if people are going to ignore our intellectual property, we're not going to sit there and allow that to happen," Rogers said. In August, the company said it was suing Verizon Communications and AT&T, claiming infringement of patents in their DVR systems. In September, Dish Network and EchoStar were ordered to pay a total of about $200 million to TiVo for contempt of an order to stop providing its DVR service after losing a patent-infringement ruling. No damages in the AT&T/Verizon case have been specified, though Rogers said they "can get pretty substantial," based on past litigation.