Cablevision to unveil remote storage DVR

Summer Debut for Cablevision Network DVR [Light Reading]

Cablevision Systems, the nation's fifth largest cable company, is planning to roll out a remote storage DVR sometime this summer. What is a remote storage DVR? Rather than have a DVR housed within a set-top box containing a hard drive to record your shows, the DVR is part of a centralized storage system that is physically located at the cable company headend. The functionality remains much the same - customers can record their favorite shows, set recording times, playback the recordings, fast forward, pause, etc. One advantage for customers with the remote storage DVR is the ability to record and playback from any television within the home connected to digital cable, rather than the one television connected to the DVR.  Another is a lower price tag on consumer premise equipment, a savings operators would be able to pass along to consumers.

But the road hasn't been simple for Cablevision as programmers have had concerns about the remote storage DVR technology. Content producers filed a suit against Cablevision's plans to deploy remote storage DVR, which may make it all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court.  But, so far, Cablevision has been prevailing in those actions and Cablevision's CEO, Tom Rutledge, indicates in this report that the company is seeking a resolution with content owners to allay their concerns regarding copyright protections. 

One area of possible compromise -- disabling the fast forward function of the DVR during commercials.  That may seem like a steep price to pay for a remote DVR, but if you can have, at your fingertips, a huge storage platform with whole-house functionality and a lower pricetag, would consumers be willing to give up skipping through ads?  Cablevision believes so.  What do you think?

I'm glad to see this great technology moving forward toward deployment.  But I'd also like to better understand consumer reaction to the advantages and disadvantages of all this if content owners get their wish to prevent us from skipping over their commercials.  I know one consumer who would not be happy -- my wife -- who almost always waits about 15 minutes before watching her favorite TV shows, just so she can FF through the commercials.

Comments

[Mark]

I think a solution similar to AT&T's U-Verse would work best. Have a main DVR in the house, and have the additional cable boxes slaved to it. This way, you still have whole-house DVR, and you are still able to FF thru commercials. Personally, I will dump my DVR if it's FF features get stripped, and go back to using my Media Center as a DVR, where I have complete control over the tape transport controls.

The other advantage to having the DVR locally is for cable outages. Whether it is due to flooding (the cause of my outage last year), ice, or anything else, the customer can still enjoy their recorded shows, while waiting for service to be restored. Personally, I caught up on all of my favorite shows while waiting for cable to be restored, which took all day due to flooding.

[Robb Topolski]

Kyle, as usual, Hollywood is ensnared in an old business model (ever longer commercial breaks cutting in to less and less desired content). And, as usual, the Cable industry is capitulating (doesn't anyone remember the promise of Cable TV being all the great commercial-free subscription content, as good as Satellite without the big-dish cost?).

And the coup-de-snake-in-the-grass, the channel in a premium tier playing an infomercial.

Please, Cable TV, quit being the *itches to these Hollywood types and strongly represent the customers who are paying you greatly to bring them the content, not the commercials.

They want to sue, let them sue. We customers on your side, and the law is on your side.

[Steve Huff]

Content providers always react poorly to inovation, dual deck cassettes, VCRS, it was all going to be the end of them. How is fast fowarding on a local DVR any different then fast fowarding content stored at the cable company? They just see a chance to jump in and whine. The bigger question is why don't cable companies release DVRs similar to what TiVo offers where you can network together your own DVRs so you can watch somehting from downstairs upstairs or vice versa. The technology already exists cause TiVo does it. I would SO Be all over that if Insight offered it.

[Tom R.]

Part of the pleasure of a DVR (for me) is the ability to compress the time required to watch a show - fast forwarding through the commercials. Not having this capability would all but make this service worthless.

There may be some people that just want to have the option to time-shift their programs. I think the value they would be willing to pay for this feature would be greatly less than a TIVO experience (maybe not free, but close to it).

Just my 2cents.