Gawker: valleywag, directv

News Corp. hacker confesses to secret payments

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:20:00 EDT

Lawyers for EchoStar claim News Corp.'s satellite TV company DirecTV hired hacker Christopher Tarnovsky to steal and sell security codes for its competing Dish Network, eventually costing EchoStar $900 million in lost revenue. Tarnovsky testified in court yesterday and admitted he wrote such a program and that he took money from News Corp. publishing unit HarperCollins for ten years. He said his first payment was "$20,000 in cash hidden in electronic devices mailed from Canada," reports Reuters. Tarnovsky and DirecTV claim the hacker was only "reverse engineering" the Dish technology — a perfectly legitimate practice in the electronics industry. Though not one typically funded through secret international payments from unrelated corporate subsidiaries. (Photo by geraintwn)

Friday Night Lights will continue, but available on torrent sites months before Hulu

Jackson West — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:40:00 EDT

Critically acclaimed but chronically low-rated jock opera Friday Night Lights managed to sneak in a third season thanks to a unique deal between NBC Universal and DirecTV. But the network has built an interesting window into the release — the episodes will premiere on DirecTV's "The 101" channel in October, but not air in prime time until February. The episodes also won't be available on Hulu until NBC airs them next year, which makes no sense at all.

There's little chance that being posted to Hulu will cut into DirecTV signups and viewers, but more importantly, it means that online video consumers will be able to download the new episodes from file-sharing sites months before they're available from Hulu. The peacock would be smart to post them to Hulu as they air on the satellite net and earn a little ad revenue, or at least seed BitTorrent networks with ad-laden files. (Photo by AP/Paul Drinkwater)

DirecTV buys TiVo's forgotten rival

Jordan Golson — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:20:28 EST

One-time DVR pioneer ReplayTV has been sold to DirecTV. This follows competitor EchoStar's purchase of Sling Media back in September. The most interesting question is what happens to TiVo now.

TiVo has been pinning its hopes on a new contract with Comcast and a new emphasis on selling ads. But hopes had run high that TiVo would make up with DirecTV. The two companies were strong partners early in TiVo's life, but their relationship has been on the rocks since 2004. Why would DirecTV want to put TiVo in its boxes now, when it can use ReplayTV software for free?