TiVo, switched video, Clicker and irony

Let me begin with a confession: as a passionate advocate of usability in consumer electronics, I am a long-time TiVo fan, so much so that its availability has dictated my choice of video content service. First DirecTV, then Comcast when they made available the Series 3 integrated with the cable service (although the CableCard installation was a nightmare of epic proportions...).

Over the last several days there were, however, four related news items, some of which seem tinged with irony:

• today, its judgement against EchoStar and DishTV for $200 million was upheld - unsurprisingly EchoStar plans to appeal - vindicating the value of the key innovation that TiVo provides
• a couple of days ago, TiVo announced its Series 4 devices: demonstrating the importance of 'over the top' video, its new UI integrates this seamlessly into the overall user experience

TiVo Premiere

• a few days earlier, Clicker, a service that in some ways appears inspired by TiVo, aiming to bring a TiVo-like experience to web TV garnered $11m in funding

Clicker

• the explosion in diversity of content and the growth of time-shifting and now place-shifting is forcing cable providers towards switched video, which in turn threatens TiVo's whole technical architecture because of its inability to communicate upstream

So, what does this mean? Does TiVo win the IP battle and lose the platform war? Do the innovators it inspired arise to eclipse it? Whither linear TV and OTT content?

(Parenthetically, the new UI is Flash-based, but then TiVo does control the hardware platform)