Cablevision’s Network DVR – Back to the Future

Todd Chanko | March 26, 2007, 11:07 AM

When is a duck not a duck? There’s some crusty old joke that must start like that. Where it ends for Cablevision, regarding its plans to deploy a network DVR, depends on whether it appeals today’s US District Court ruling. Cablevision had sought to deploy technology developed by Arroyo – whose investors prior to its acquisition by Cisco had included Comcast and Time Warner – to liberate subscribers from the limitations imposed by a DVR’s finite hard drive. In lieu of recording and storing programming locally, Arroyo had developed technology in which subscribers would store requested content at the cable operator’s head-end.

The legal issues raised by the plaintiffs – which, ironically, also included Time Warner, as well as News Corporation and Disney – center on the rights to store and retransmit content, claiming that Cablevision’s deployment would violate such rights. Yet, consumers would be the arbiters of timing of any “retransmission,” consistent with the on-demand world in which we reside. However, DVR revenues are not shared with content providers – and that may be the real issue upon which the studios are pouncing. Time Warner’s Start Over service does, in fact, allow for revenue sharing with the networks whose programming is being shifted by subscribers. Is this legal battle but a ploy to pressure the cable industry on concessions to programmers? Certainly if unauthorized duplication or distribution of stored content were at issue, these are readily answered by the conditional access and DRM applications available.

What is undoubtedly true is that a network DVR blurs the lines even more between DVR functionality and VOD. More and more VOD is free – and ad supported. Check out my recent report on Advertising on DVRs to see how just how blurred these lines are.