The United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas is becoming a hot bed for patent infringement suits. This is because the judge in the court has a history of siding with the patent holders in infringement suits and has awarded verdicts against Nintendo and other large companies already.

TiVo is trying its luck in the courtroom with a new patent infringement suit against AT&T and Verizon over patents relating to DVR technologies TiVo holds. The patents in question are Nos. 6,233,389 B1 (”Multimedia Time Warping System”), 7,529,465 B2 (”System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams”), and 7,493,015 B1 (”Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System”).

Looks like TiVo is trying to muscle their way into several providers, having gotten a victory out of EchoStar in that DVR patent lawsuit. It’s in talks to bring its service to Time Warner Cable, and according to sources, the endgame is to collect royalties from every pay-TV provider in the US.

That might sound arrogant, or even bullying, but the patents have withstood nearly every legal challenge EchoStar could throw at them, so TiVo is pretty confidant. It has license agreements with Comcast and DirecTV to use as leverage in negotiations too.

This is going to honk off many of you. According to a press release issued earlier today, TiVo will now be offering ad space on its pause menu. I hear you. It sucks. But it’s your fault.

The spam messages ads are designed to outsmart those who fast-forward through the ads (everyone). Advertisers will be able to target viewers of a specific show, or they can cast a wider net and advertise within genres or keywords of program descriptions. At the moment, only Series2 owners are subjected to the new ads as part of the 9.3.2 update.

There’s few things better than owning a piece of technology or gadget that keeps on giving, and TiVo is turning out to be one of those devices with it’s latest beta release of a mobile website to control your TiVo box. This adds to the devices core ability to act as a DVR, and the company has also recently introduced features to order pizza, stream Netflix content and watch YouTube videos.

TiVo says the new mobile site at m.tivo.com will allow users, subscribers or not, to browse television listings and search for shows. The online app will also will recommend other television shows based on what you are viewing. The site is available to anyone that has access to the internet through a mobile browser, and no installation on the mobile device is necessary.

American couch potatoes can thank TiVo and Domino’s Pizza for teaming up to offer them on-demand pizza ordering for broadband-connected TiVo subscribers. The service was announced for Australia earlier in the month, but USA users get the first crack at it. One weak point is the lack of a scheduled delivery option, but this may be just a taste of what’s to come as it shows that many differentiating types of applications could find their way to your TiVo box. Go ahead, order up. Just get off the couch now and then will ya?

Online movie rentals are one of the most convenient ways for movie fans to get their favorite films without leaving the house. The catch is that many of the newest releases aren’t available for streaming rentals. Netflix offers a streaming on demand library of 12,000 movies and TV shows to its subscribers.

Several hardware devices will allow Netflix members to access the streaming content including the Xbox 360 and some DVD players. Netflix and TiVo announced today that TiVo DVR subscribers would be able to access the streaming content library over certain TiVo DVRs.

The DVR has been the best thing to happen to TV since programming went color. Before the DVR, we had to record shows with a DVD recorder or even worse — a VCR. Anyone who has tried to program a VCR to record a show that isn’t on yet will recall the anxiety. The DVR came along and made recording programs as easy as clicking a button and one of the pioneers in the DVR realm was TiVo.

Nero and TiVo announced that they have teamed up for a new software and hardware product called Nero LiquidTV | TiVo PC. The product allows users to record TV programs on their PC with typical DVR ease as well as pause and rewind programs. Once TV programs are recorded, the shows can be exported to PSP, iPod or DVD automatically.

TiVo and YouTube, which announced plans earlier this year to unleash YouTube videos on TiVo set top boxes, made good on that promise today by kicking off said service. Get ready TiVo subscribers - YouTube videos of cheap dog tricks and people’s virtual diaries are coming your way.

TiVo and YouTube specifically said this new partnership “allows broadband-connected subscribers with TiVo Series3and TiVo HD DVRs, to access hundreds of millions of user generated videos hosted on YouTube.” You’ll need a YouTube account to access this new TiVo feature, which will be made available when a new TiVo box software upgrade is rolled out.

DVR heavyweight TiVo has been relatively quiet at CES this year, making only one announcement of note. It’s a pretty big deal, at least to TiVo users. TiVo is planning to let its customer base make use of RSS feeds to pull down Web video content for view on their DVRs. The company plans to roll out this service addition in March.

TiVo said specifically customers who upgrade to TiVo’s newest pay for desktop software will be able to use the DVR’s Season Pass functionality to schedule and automatically download new Web video across a variety of categories.

As the screenwriters’ strike drags on and those without TiVos are forced to watch reruns, TiVo owners and those of other DVR style devices provided by the likes of cable companies can take stock in the fact they can stretch their original programming a little further than others. This of course does not include viewing commercials, according to a new survey from ABI Research.

The research firm found that DVR technology has reached a point in the market where anyone with this type of gear is getting used to blasting through on-screen ads. Numbers from this survey find four out of five TiVo and 82% of other DVR users skip all or most commercials. Both types are also both likely to record significant amounts of TV per day.

TiVo has had to rethink its online photo access strategy in the wake of Yahoo earlier this year shutting down its photo service to focus instead on Flickr. To that end the DVR company announced today TiVo owners who use Photobucket and Picasa Web Albums will now be able to view photos through their TiVo boxes.

TiVo is shooting for letting its broadband connected DVRs access increasing amounts of Web based content and this updated feature certainly reflects that trend. TiVo says users also “will be able to customize their photo viewing capabilities by searching community photos of interest by keyword” so they can create custom slideshows of favorite categories of photos.

TiVo and Nero, a technology developer which produces ways for the “creation and distribution of content between people, devices and locations,” are teaming up to further integrate the DVR experience into your PC. The agreement between the two was announced today.

TiVo and Nero said the latter will eventually offer software which brings non-mentioned TiVo features to your computer. The two companies see this as a way to capitalize on those who want a better PC-based-DVR like experience. A report published earlier this year suggests an estimated 50.8 million PC TV tuners will be sold worldwide by 2011. No word was given on when this would be made available.

Oh Canada…how we stand on guard for thee! TiVo is now part of that guard rotation as well, announcing today its DVR product will be available for the holidays for shoppers. The priced will be set at $199 CAD plus your standard TiVo subscription fees.

The 80-hour TiVo Series2 DT DVR will bring many of your standard TiVo functions to our northern neighbor. TiVo says these include “SeasonPass recordings, WishList searches, Online Scheduling, TiVoToGo transfers, Multi-Room viewing, and TrickPlay functionality, which enables users to pause, rewind, instant replay and slow-motion live TV.” The DVR will be able to record two shows at once. TiVo lovers in Quebec are unfortunately out of luck for the moment as the service will not be available there.

TiVo kicked out today a service update for TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD users which offers, among other new features, external storage support. The first verified external hard drive product to support this update is Western Digital’s $120 500GB My DVR Expander.

The new TiVo update is designed to work with E-SATA drives, specifically at the moment the Western Digital My DVR Expander. This 500GB hard drive can store up to 600 hours of standard-definition (SD) or up to 65 hours of high-definition (HD) television programming. It can also store broadband content that TiVo makes available through TiVoCast partners, including movie and TV downloads via Amazon Unbox on TiVo. The drive itself is available now.

Reports have surfaced that popular DVR company Tivo is getting ready to release a major update to its Tivo Desktop software. This release, which perhaps might occur today, is version 2.5.

A posting on a Tivo user forum by a person known to be a Tivo employee reveals the software will offer “new features & improvements you’ve asked for.” The listed features include support for Windows Vista, support for DixV (DivX?) and Xvid formats for web video conversion and conversion of individual shows from the software’s new playing list to any profile.