Supreme Court allows networked DVRs to proceed
Supremes Won’t Hear Cablevision Case, Hello Remote DVRs! [NewTeeVee]
A court challenge to cable operator Cablevision's plans for a remote, networked DVR ended in Cablevision's favor yesterday. I've written previously about Cablevision's networked DVR, which it has indicated that it plans to indroduce this summer. The court challenge to the remote storage DVR was brought by a group of content creators that alleged that the device infringed upon their copyrights. Yesterday, after a series of court rulings in Cablevision's favor, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the content producers' appeal, thus affirming the ability of Cablevision to offer the new technology to customers.
Rather than have a DVR housed within a set-top box containing a hard drive to record your shows, the networked 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 only 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. And frankly, the set-top DVR occasionally can have technical problems that require operators to change them out. When we do so, customers lose the recordings that were stored in the malfunctioning box. That won't happen when programs are restored in a network environment.
So, now the remote storage DVR will become available to Cablevision's customers and the idea is likely to be considered by other cable operators now that the legal challenge has been won. We at Insight will watch the launch closely to evaluate the technology and consumer reaction. With some cable operators planning to offer programming choices to customers via an online portal, the possibilities to integrate remote storage DVR with online viewing are truly exciting. I'm sure cable engineers are already thinking about how to allow customers to view their networked DVR's recordings via an online portal.



