Home

News

Reviews

Forum

Articles

Columns

Podcast

Programming

Reports

Studies

Resources

HD Equipment

Today's Show:
In a ruling on August 4th, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a district court decision that barred Cablevision from launching a new technology it is calling Remote-Storage DVR (RS-DVR). The district court had blocked release of this service to Cablevision subscribers, but as of Monday, it's back on the table. Remote-Storage DVR provides all of the benefit of a DVR, without all of the drawbacks. You can record, playback, pause, fast-forward and rewind television just like a DVR, but you don't have to worry about ever running out of storage and you can view the programs from any TV in your home.

Have DVR, No DVR Required
Cablevision wins in ruling on remote storage DVR

Win-win all around
With this new remote storage DVR model, Cable companies can reduce costs significantly. Each home with a digital television could simply receive a CableCard for each TV, reducing the cost to both the operator and the subscriber. According to current research, set-top DVRs accounted for about 10% of cable operators' capital expenditures (Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett). But this reduced cost to subscribers opens the door for many more people to start fast-forwarding through commercials. That's exactly what the broadcasters are afraid of.

But there could be a win in it for the broadcasters as well. With a program stored on a central server, there's the possibility to actually update the ads embedded in the show. That technology doesn't exist and would be very problematic on standard home-installed DVRs. So while viewers would be skipping the commercials, at least they'd be skipping relevant commercials ;-). All kidding aside, we do stop the DVR and go back if an ad catches our attention. We'd be much more likely to do that if the ad was relevant and not outdated or months old.

Does it really matter that much?
If you can have a DVR now, or you can get one that stored the recordings on a server somewhere else, does it really matter that much? Yes it absolutely does. There is so much potential for a technology like this. First of all, one cool potential feature would eliminate the need to actually choose to record anything. As long as one person wants it and it gets stored on the server, it should be available for anyone. This turns all of television into an on demand system. As long as it's after the original air date, you just pull it up and watch it. And you don't have to find a way to "network" your TVs anymore. All your TVs can access the recordings. Brilliant.

Less money and more features, who could ask for anything more? Of course the court struggle certainly isn't over yet, but assuming it holds up, this could be really good news for everyone in Cable-land.

© 1998 - 2008 HDTV Magazine, Ltd.
Home  |   Advertise  |  Contact Us  |  About HDTV Magazine  |  Help  |  
v3.0