Most ReplayTV assets sold to DirecTV

The struggling DVR company has once again changed hands, this time to the nation's largest satellite provider.

"Although we valued this asset and the business was profitable, the sale of ReplayTV to DirecTV makes the most sense for this business, its employees and us," D&M Holdings CEO Eric Evans said in a statement.

It is not immediately clear as to what DirecTV plans to do with the company's assets or technology holdings. However, it will be the third time in only four years that ReplayTV had changed hands.

The company was originally a private startup, founded in 1997. SONICblue acquired the company's assets in 2001, however it fell into hard times and filed for bankruptcy in March 2003, and ReplayTV's assets were sold to D&M Holdings a month later.

Now in DirecTV's hands, the future of ReplayTV is uncertain. While the assets of the the company are now the satellite provider's, D&M will remain the operator of existing service contracts "for the foreseeable future."

This seems to indicate that the company is more interested in the technology than the actual service. David Zatz of Zatz Not Funny speculated that it may be a defensive measure for the future.

"I suppose it's possible they could think about using the ReplayTV interface on their satellite DVRs, re-enter the stand-alone hardware business, or just hang onto Replay's patent portfolio for a rainy day, or to prevent that rainy day," he wrote in a blog post.