[Herdfan]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court ruled that Cablevision Systems Corp may go forward with its plan to introduce a new digital video recorder service that film studios and television networks had said violated their copyrights.

Reversing a lower court ruling, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said Cablevision's proposed new service "would not directly infringe plaintiffs' exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works."

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0448712120080804?rpc=44

I know this isn't exclusively about DirecTV, but the article refers to the impact the ruling could have on all pay television providers.

 

[alexjb12]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court ruled that Cablevision Systems Corp may go forward with its plan to introduce a new digital video recorder service that film studios and television networks had said violated their copyrights.

Reversing a lower court ruling, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said Cablevision's proposed new service "would not directly infringe plaintiffs' exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works."

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0448712120080804?rpc=44

I know this isn't exclusively about DirecTV, but the article refers to the impact the ruling could have on all pay television providers.

I can see it now. For $10 more you can get 5 more gigabytes of recording space

 

[evan_s]

In this situation I think the devil is in the details. As long as they stick to a strict DVR implementation I think they should be allowed to store the recorded videos where ever they want. External HD, NAS in my house, NAS maintained by the cable company. It's really all the same as far as I'm concerned. Thing is I doubt the local box is receiving the show and then transmitting it to the cable company NAS. That just seems like a lot of extra work and overhead that wouldn't seem to be much better than having it local. Ok so they move the recording on the stream to the NAS at the cable company but do they have 2 tuners per box and 80mbs of storage to store that exact recording or is more of a massive MVR DVR that just records anything any user has set to record and serves up the same recording to any user that asked to record it? If you are already doing that it's really dang close to just recording and rebroadcasting everything your cable co transmits. The only thing preventing it is really just the UI.

I have no idea where in this chain cable visions particular implementation lands but I can see some concern on the one end. It's more likely what the cable co's want to implement since it has the most benefit to them but it's also really close to rebroadcasting.

 

[Ken S]

In this situation I think the devil is in the details. As long as they stick to a strict DVR implementation I think they should be allowed to store the recorded videos where ever they want. External HD, NAS in my house, NAS maintained by the cable company. It's really all the same as far as I'm concerned. Thing is I doubt the local box is receiving the show and then transmitting it to the cable company NAS. That just seems like a lot of extra work and overhead that wouldn't seem to be much better than having it local. Ok so they move the recording on the stream to the NAS at the cable company but do they have 2 tuners per box and 80mbs of storage to store that exact recording or is more of a massive MVR DVR that just records anything any user has set to record and serves up the same recording to any user that asked to record it? If you are already doing that it's really dang close to just recording and rebroadcasting everything your cable co transmits. The only thing preventing it is really just the UI.

I have no idea where in this chain cable visions particular implementation lands but I can see some concern on the one end. It's more likely what the cable co's want to implement since it has the most benefit to them but it's also really close to rebroadcasting.

If the content owners gave this a little thought they would be embracing this model over the individual DVR. Why? Well, they're content is now only in the hands of the MVPDs and not on the hard drives of the customers. So instead of 10,000,000 copies of American Idol (or whatever) being made...there are a few hundred at most. They also would have direct contractual links with the MVPDs...bringing them a lot more leverage.

While DirecTV and Dish probably aren't liking this model (for obvious reasons)...it's probably where we'll end up through either cable or IPTV down the road.

At some point in time (10 years+) someone is going to say...why are we using all this bandwidth for OTA? It's just not necessary.

 

[Jeremy W]

If you are already doing that it's really dang close to just recording and rebroadcasting everything your cable co transmits. The only thing preventing it is really just the UI.

That's like saying "The only thing preventing me from watching every channel for free is the UI." Of course, that's part of the UI's job. I don't see why that's a problem in this scenario.

 

[Drew2k]

My local newspaper, Newsday, was just acquired by Cablevision, so here's their article on the court order: http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcabl0805,0,7198352.story

Personally I think it makes sense for the cable companies to want to store the recordings, as it lowers costs for equipment as well as support. The MPAA really just doesn't get it ... as far as I'm concerned, watching a program that the customer initiated and had recorded to Cablevision's remote storage is a win for everyone, especially the MPAA, as Ken said, there's one copy of the recording, not hundreds of thousands.

 

[Guest]

This is nothing but a way to buffer programming on all channels, instead of just the channels your tuners are receiving. Hollywood doesn't like it because it gives consumers the right to go back and watch programs that have aired over the past 24 hours on all channels. In theory this would increase the overall audience, but it's obvious they see it as some kind of threat to their business model.

In any event, buffering programming isn't going to prevent people from recording shows to their DVRs. Programs are only buffered for the past 24 hours, so people are still going to be recording to their DVRs. Programs would be stored on Cablevision's remote storage in addition to being stored on hundreds of thousands of DVRs.

 

[Jeremy W]

This is nothing but a way to buffer programming on all channels, instead of just the channels your tuners are receiving.

I don't think you understand the way the service works. It has nothing to do with buffering, it's literally a DVR with a remote hard drive. You don't even need a DVR to use the service, it works with any digital cable receiver because the recordings are stored remotely. And they're not kept for 24 hours, they're kept until you delete them. You also can only access programming that YOU recorded, just as if it were a normal DVR sitting on top of your TV.

 

[Steve]

This is a great approach that guarantees no, partial, "black" or "gray" recordings.

It also solves the "I need more than 2-tuners" problem.

And assuming the scheduling is done per account, it's an MRV solution as well.

Can't stand Cablevision for what they did to the NY Knicks, but I have to give them credit for pursuing this "remote storage" idea in the courts.

/steve