Tivo Inc

A capital infusion for TiVo Inc., a maker of videorecorders that pause and replay live television shows, drove its stock to a six-month high Tuesday. Shares of the Alviso, Calif.-based company jumped $1.21, or 12%, to $11 on Nasdaq after the firm said it raised $74 million in a secondary stock offering. Tivo said it sold 8 million shares at $9.30 each -- a 5% discount to Monday's closing stock price of $9.79.

On Oct. 9, a day the Dow dropped 679 points, TiVo Inc. deposited a check for $104.6 million. The company had just won a hard-fought battle against EchoStar Communications Inc., whose Dish Network digital video recorders were found by a federal jury to infringe TiVo's patents. "I think we were the only company doing high-fives that day," recalled TiVo Chief Executive Tom Rogers. TiVo, whose name has become synonymous with digital video recorders, is the comeback kid of technology.

TiVo Inc. is more famous than it is rich. The Alviso, Calif., company is best known for its pioneering device that lets television viewers record, pause and rewind live TV shows. But despite its watershed technology and near household-name recognition, TiVo has struggled to make money, posting only two profitable quarters since its founding in 1997. Its subscriber base has slipped to 4.1 million from 4.5 million in 2006. Since Chief Executive Thomas S.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to disturb a $74-million judgment against Dish Network Corp. for violating a patent held by TiVo Inc. involving digital video recorders. Without comment, the justices declined to consider Dish's appeal. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that digital video recorders distributed by Dish, formerly known as EchoStar Communications Corp., violated the software elements of Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo's patent.

Netflix Inc. continues to expand the reach of its "Watch Instantly" video streaming service, striking a deal to make its movie and TV shows available to about 1 million TiVo owners who have high-speed Internet connections. The partnership represents a bit of back to the future for Netflix and TiVo Inc. They originally announced a video-on-demand deal in fall 2004. That earlier agreement unraveled because of a combination of technology and rights issues.

Coming soon to a couch near you: dinner that you've ordered by picking up the remote. TiVo Inc. and Domino's Pizza Inc. on Monday launched a service that allows consumers to order food delivery from their TV set-top boxes. The offering, which is available to those of TiVo's 3.6 million subscribers who have a broadband-ready box, is at the forefront of what's expected to be an onslaught of services allowing people to buy things through their TVs.

TiVo Inc., the pioneer of digital TV recording, reached agreements to offer its video services to Comcast Corp.'s cable TV customers and to distribute music from RealNetworks Inc. Comcast, the biggest U.S. cable company, will add TiVo features to existing set-top boxes and charge a fee for the added service, the companies said. RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service will be offered this year, Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo said.

Amazon.com Inc. and TiVo Inc. are trying to bridge the gap between the PC and television. The two companies plan today to announce an alliance that will enable some TiVo Inc. customers to use their TVs to watch movies and television shows purchased through Amazon's nascent online video store, Unbox. The service addresses one of the greatest impediments to the growth of Internet video -- viewers can't watch it on their living room TVs.

TiVo Inc., the maker of digital video recorders, reported a narrower fiscal fourth-quarter loss Wednesday as the company attracted new subscribers. The net loss shrank to $18.7 million, or 19 cents a share, in the quarter ended Jan. 31 from $21.1 million, or 25 cents, a year earlier, the Alviso, Calif.-based company said. Sales rose 29% to $77.6 million, with revenue from subscriptions and software beating analysts' estimates.

A friend showed me recently how to program my TiVo remote so that I can skip ahead in 30-second increments with one touch of a button. I had been living in relative darkness, working the arrow buttons, fast-forwarding to the first, second or third power, watching a "Grey's Anatomy" episode in 10 minutes (medical-medical-medical, Meredith-whatever, Burke-whatever, stop to see if George and Izzie have sex).