johnnymk

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/te...html?th&emc=th

The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a blow to the television networks when it declined to hear a case about a digital video recorder technology, opening the gate for wider use of DVR systems.

The case began in 2006 when Cablevision Systems, the New York-area cable operator, announced plans for what is called a network DVR system. With it, a customer would use a remote control to digitally record a program like “60 Minutes” but instead of storing the show in the customer’s at-home DVR box, the technology would store the show on a faraway Cablevision server.

The technology would let Cablevision convert set-top boxes into boxes with DVR capabilities without requiring an installation or new equipment.

“It opens up the possibility of offering a DVR experience to all of our digital cable customers,” Tom Rutledge, Cablevision’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. Programmers including Turner Broadcasting System’s Cartoon Network, CNN and television networks sued Cablevision, saying the system violated copyright law. In March 2007, a lower court agreed, ruling that Cablevision “would be engaging in unauthorized reproductions and transmissions of plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York reversed that decision in August 2008. The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court’s refusal essentially reinforced the Second Circuit’s decision.

Patrick Ross, the executive director of the Copyright Alliance, an industry group that includes the Motion Picture Association of America and Time Warner, said a recording stored in a network was different from one stored in a consumer’s set-top box.

“This appears to be a very clever way for a licensee of creative works to develop new distribution methods that, it would argue, do not require licenses,” said Mr. Ross, whose group filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Besides the licensing issue, programmers are generally opposed to anything that makes DVRs more pervasive, because consumers using DVRs tend to skip advertisements.

Cablevision said the decision would help make DVRs more accessible. Mr. Rutledge has argued that DVRs are not necessarily bad for advertisers, saying programmers and advertisers could, for example, sign agreements allowing Cablevision to insert new ads into recorded content.

Cablevision halted its introduction of the network DVR in 2006, and plans to introduce a preview of it this summer, when it will allow some customers to pause live shows. It has not announced when it will introduce the full service, or how much it will cost customers.

mojo

potentially this could be more efficient in that if 100 people request the content be recorded, it really would only have to be recorded once and then provided as available to those who ordered it. maybe this could even happen after the fact.

they may even be able to use technology similar to the MoCA (multimedia over coax alliance) to produce it. this is what you use in "whole house DVR," where you have a host settop initially download the content and then allow access to it on other settops within the household.

like VOD, they could inject their own commercials into the slots. so this would fulfill the revenue generation they're looking for, as described in the article. whether or not you can fast-forward thru it would be the trick as to if they go for it or not.

pretty interesting stuff. depending on the content, they may have to use a couple of different technologies to accommodate the extra bandwidth.

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Thesifer

Actually if they did it right, they would never have to "Record" it at all. As they could just mark you down in a database as having that show "recorded" and then just push it to you whenever you want to watch it, allowing you to "lock in" so many shows or charge extra for more.

Kind of like VOD except with more options.

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Nija

I don't care what or how they do it, as long as I can ignore the damn commercials.

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VTGreg

I think using this kind of model would make it more difficult to rationalize the Supreme Court's ruling. If they used this model they would be holding and redistributing copyrighted content. If the user at least had to record it they could contend that they aren't acting any differently than a DVR and wouldn't be holding all material.

You are correct that "network DVR" would virtually eliminate limits on how much you could record. A strong selling point for those offering the service.

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mojo

live content would have to be recorded/encoded.

technically, for non-live content they could use the same technology as with VOD, but then they'd really tax the servers. a MoCA-like solution would just require more network storage and something to expand the host output for the area.

when you record to a DVR, it's considered that the content never leaves the cable provider/fios/etc's network. you can't record digitally (legally) off of a DVR. so essentially it's the same as the DVR at your house.



if you ignore the commercials, they will be forced to inject their products into your psyche by brute force.

VTGreg

I agree it's the same as when you record at your house if the subscriber is selecting up front what he/she wants to record. However, I do think there is a distinction if the cable provider stores all content proactively and then lets the customers subscribe to the content to watch it again afterwards. One is redistribution of copyrighted material and the other is not. That's my only contention.

mojo

i don't know what the courts would say in these conditions, but the content providers can determine how they want their assets handled by using a CCI flag (copy control information). it determines how you can record and under what conditions.