As rumored back in September, it has now announced on Friday that Malone's Liberty Media Corp will be getting a 38% controlling stake in DirecTV from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. In exchange Rupert Murdoch will receive Liberty's 16.3% of News CorpAs part of the deal Liberty will also get three regional sports networks and $550 million in cash. The deal as a whole is estimated to be worth around $9 billion.
Many of you will remember that not too long ago DirecTV ditched TiVo and started using PVRs produced by NDS. NDS is a company which Rupert Murdoch is a large shareholder in.
These NDS PVRs, such as the DirecTV R15 And DirecTV Hr20-700, have been frequently criticized for reliability and functionality issues. To put it bluntly they just don't match up to TiVo.
But now that Rupert Murdoch is out of the picture TiVo could be returning back to DirecTV which will certainly make a lot of people very happy. Liberty Media was actually an equity investor in TiVo.
Let's just hope that the trade of DirecTV over to Liberty did not include a clause that the company must continue to use the NDS PVRs.
[Via WeaKnees]
1. Satellite need to learn from cableco that are about to TiVo their subscribers. Who wants an inferior service only because you get a free box? TiVo advantages are simply remarkable. I will be sending my Christmas home videos directly to my mom's TiVo in Canada, so she and family can see them directly on her TV set. Isn't that great?
I like to see how my TiVo is caring for my kids viewing habits. A new agreement between Direct TV and TiVo could give its users these unmatched services that anyone will be willing to pay a few bucks more for. The guy is right!
Posted at 1:55PM on Dec 24th 2006 by Robert Benhart