Dishing Out Desperation

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but sometimes it's just time to move on. Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH) is basically saying it wants a do-over in its patent skirmish with TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO), and at this point, that may easily be interpreted as desperation.

In January, a federal court of appeals dealt TiVo a heartening victory, ruling that Dish's digital video recorders (DVRs) ran afoul of TiVo's patents. The court said Dish Network owed TiVo $94 million in damages.

In more good news, TiVo narrowed its loss in its most recent quarter. As much as TiVo has struck me as a highly challenged -- and speculative -- investment for quite some time, glancing at its stock price right now makes me wish I hadn't ended my "outperform" rating on it in our Motley Fool CAPS community intelligence database last September (I ended it at $6.09, no less).

Although I'm still not completely sold on TiVo as a long-term investment in the real world, things look much better than several years ago. Plus, TiVo's still ramping up ancillary services; its latest is allowing users to download Web video directly to their TiVo boxes. They will be able to utilize TiVo's Season Pass functionality and Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds in order to do so, allowing them to subscribe to newscasts, podcasts, and so forth. This comes on the heels of another recent development: Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) YouTube will be available via TiVo, too. That's all good stuff, because as much as licensing arrangements will help its business, so will a steady stream of innovations to differentiate it from generic DVRs.  

However, maybe the real story here is how Dish Network sounds desperate -- and perhaps even overwhelmed. Yesterday, it disclosed that a new satellite fell short of reaching its intended orbit, delaying its high-definition content (including some local network channels -- ouch). Engineers from SES Americom and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) are trying to correct its orbit, but if the measures work, they will "substantially" reduce the satellite's service life. Good times.

Maybe Dish Network shareholders have good reason to worry that the stock is going to fail to reach its intended orbit.

Related Foolishness:

• In November, it looked like we're all getting a TiVo.