Deal Soon with DirecTV on DVRs

[Gregg Lengling]

NDS Group, News Corp.'s TV technology unit, said it's closer to getting DirecTV on board with its services, including a digital video recorder product.

NDS President and CEO Abe Peled said Monday that an agreement with DirecTV has not yet been signed, but added he soon expects a deal with the satellite TV company that will put NDS' XTV DVR into DirecTV set-top boxes, with shipments beginning in first quarter 2005. Also, some of NDS' middleware products may appear in DirecTV systems sometime in the fourth quarter, Peled said.

Peled said NDS has been "spending heavily" on middleware and the XTV digital recorder product for DirecTV, and that the company has made "Significant progress" in developing new technology for the satellite TV company.

News about the XTV DVR in future DirecTV set-top boxes sent TiVo's stock down more than 5 percent to $5.34 Monday. TiVo supplies DirecTV with DVRs, and has generated most of its subscriptions from DirecTV's service.

DirecTV has said in the past it plans to continue using TiVo, though comment wasn't available from the company concerning NDS Monday.

In addition to NDS, News Corp. also controls DirecTV.

[kjnorman]

There is some interesting speculation and rumor on this on this thread.

Information on the XTV platform is at the NDS site:

XTV

Okay and even more rumor at DBStalk

Remember folks - Speculation and Rumor!

[sp44again]

I hate rumors.