Cablevision DVR

Posted on August 4, 2008

If you are a Cablevision customer, your provider has been wanting to offer you an innovative new product but have been prevented from doing so by the US legal system.

Cablevision had one court block their attempt to provide a unique DVR service after being sued by Disney, Time Warner, and others. However, an appeals court has sided with them in overturning the earlier court ruling that had blocked them from offering a network-based DVR service.

Arguments from the movie and TV industry have been that it infringes on their copyrights.

But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, ruled that Cablevision’s proposed new service that allows movies and TV shows to be recorded on remote storage servers in Cablevision’s network “would not directly infringe plaintiffs’ exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works.”

The ruling could have a major impact on new services that cable and other video providers can offer, and it could help reduce the price of DVR services.

Up until now, video providers have offered DVR services that allow people to record, store, and play back movies and TV shows on their set top boxes. Everybody is familiar with that but Cablevision’s Remote Storage DVR or RS-DVR service would allow people to have all the same functionality they have with their current DVRs, but it doesn’t require them to have a special box to do it. Instead, all the recording is in Cablevision’s network rather than on a box sitting in the subscriber’s home.

By putting the functionality in the network, Cablevision could reduce the cost of offering the service. Believe it or not, cable operators say they spend about 10 percent of their capital investment providing DVR boxes to customers. If Cablevision can reduce its cost, it could offer the service at a lower price, which in turn could appeal to a lot more subscribers. It also means they can roll out the service to new subscribers much more quickly.

One other benefit from the consumer side is this might also allow people to get rid of their set-top boxes altogether. And since the DVR function is housed in Cablevision’s network instead of at home, consumers won’t have to deal with housing a relatively complex piece of networking equipment in their homes.