US 6,233,389 · Granted 2001-05-15

The TiVo Patent That Invented Pausing Live TV

This is the foundational patent behind TiVo's DVR technology — the system that lets you record one TV show while watching another, and then pause, rewind, or fast-forward through live television. It converts whatever signal your TV receives (broadcast, cable, satellite) into a format that can be stored and played back with full remote control.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system that accepts multiple types of TV input signals, converts them to a standardized digital format (MPEG), separates the video and audio into separate streams, stores them on a hard drive with event markers that track what's recorded and when, and then reassembles those streams on demand so a viewer can play, pause, rewind, fast-forward, or slow-motion through recorded content. What's protected here is the specific pipeline that decouples real-time TV reception from storage and playback.

Why it matters

This patent is foundational to the DVR category itself. TiVo filed this in 1998 and received it in 2001, essentially securing the core mechanics of how DVRs work — the ability to buffer and timeshift broadcast television. The patent's design using event markers and separate video/audio buffers was elegant because it allowed cheaper computers to handle the task by not forcing the CPU to process the video stream in real-time. This became central to TiVo's business and market position in the early 2000s.

Real-world use

Every time you hit pause on a DVR while watching live sports, or rewind to catch something you missed during a commercial break, you're using the exact workflow this patent describes.

Original USPTO abstract

A multimedia time warping system. The invention allows the user to store selected television broadcast programs while the user is simultaneously watching or reviewing another program. A preferred embodiment of the invention accepts television (TV) input streams in a multitude of forms, for example, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) or PAL broadcast, and digital forms such as Digital Satellite System (DSS), Digital Broadcast Services (DBS), or Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC). The TV streams are converted to an Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream for internal transfer and manipulation and are parsed and separated it into video and audio components. The components are stored in temporary buffers. Events are recorded that indicate the type of component that has been found, where it is located, and when it occurred. The program logic is notified that an event has occurred and the data is extracted from the buffers. The parser and event buffer decouple the CPU from having to parse the MPEG stream and from the real time nature of the data streams which allows for slower CPU and bus speeds and translate to lower system costs. The video and audio components are stored on a storage device and when the program is requested for display, the video and audio components are extracted from the storage device and reassembled into an MPEG stream which is sent to a decoder. The decoder converts the MPEG stream into TV output signals and delivers the TV output signals to a TV receiver. User control commands are accepted and sent through the system. These commands affect the flow of said MPEG stream and allow the user to view stored programs with at least the following functions: reverse, fast forward, play, pause, index, fast/slow reverse play, and fast/slow play.

Patent details

Publication number: US 6,233,389
Filing date: 1998-07-30
Grant date: 2001-05-15
Assignee: Tivo, Inc.
Inventor(s): BARTON JAMES M., MCINNIS RODERICK JAMES, MOSKOWITZ ALAN S., GOODMAN ANDREW MARTIN, CHOW CHING TONG, KAO JEAN SWEY
CPC class: H04N5/775

View original record on Google Patents →

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