Comcast and Time Warner executives are welcoming an initiative by New York cable operator Cablevision Systems to offer a network video recorder that removes the need for set-top box storage.
Comcast and Time Warner executives are welcoming an initiative by New York cable operator Cablevision Systems to offer a network video recorder that removes the need for set-top box storage.
The virtual video recorder, which Cablevision is is calling a remote storage digital video recorder or RS-DVR, will store programmes at the cable headend rather than the receiver. This reduces the cost of supplying, installing and repairing individual digital video recorders at the customer premises.
As with other forms of video-on-demand service, this could give cable operators an essential advantage over satellite television broadcasters.
For Cablevision, one of the smaller and more progressive cable operators in the United States, it requires little more than a software download to existing set-top boxes. In essence it turns every set-top box into a virtual PVR.
Subscribers will have very similar facilities to a dedicated digital recorder, able to record two channels simultaneously, in standard or high-definition format, using up to 80 gigabytes of dedicated, rented space on a network server.
Cablevision will begin with a limited test in its Long Island, New York market and is likely to expand to the rest of its 2 million subscriber base later in the year.
“If it happens, which I predict it will, I’m sure the rest of the industry will follow,” Comcast chief operating officer Steve Burke told a conference in New York.
Network-based recording has been used in Europe and will form an important aspect of new broadband video services. Previous experiments in America ran into rights difficulties with programming networks, and advertisers are concerned about advert avoidance.
Time Warner Cable eventually aborted its Mystro service, which would have automatically stored programmes on the network. Cablevision argues that nothing will be stored on its network unless it is specifically requested by the viewer, which lawyers will argue constitutes fair use.
The hosted storage approach requires more storage than a system that allows subscribers to share access to recorded programmes, and it requires the consumer to set the recording in advance, but it may be more robust to legal challenge according to precedents such as the famous Sony Betamax case.
Time Warner, which has been testing a more limited recording service called Start Over, says that it could also provide a similar facility if it proves to be legal and something that customers want.