Supreme Court declines to hear remote storage DVR appeal, cloud recording is on the way
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jun 29th 2009 12:53PM
posted Jun 29th 2009 12:53PM
It seems like Cablevision and others have been trying to roll out "remote storage" network DVRs forever, and now that the Supreme Court has decided against hearing the appeal of the Hollywood studios looking to block it, they should finally be able to deliver as soon as this summer. Of course, there's benefits to having a locally stored copy of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, but just in case we forgot to queue up a recording, the power went out or suffered some other manner of catastrophe, we'd still have access to all the Lou Diamond Phillips anyone could ask for, and there's really no way the highest court in the land could get in the way of that.
that sounds awesome, now if i could just get a better cable company, im still stuck with about 11 HD channels, bah!
erst
bastard.
first@
incoming fail
Bout Time!
This is the first case I think Cablevision should win. Usually they are trying to steal from the public.
A step in the right direction. Now we just need everyone to start supporting Tru 2 Way so I can finally get rid of the cable box and go back to just using the TV to change channels. However knowing the extra revenue they generate from the digital boxes I doubt companies want to dump them anytime soon.
they can always raise the rental fee of cablecards when (if) they get 2-way working :P
Wait, Lou Diamond Phillips is on the show?
speaking of LDP, bring on Stargate: Universe!
Don't worry Hollywood, most of us have the most shitacular service on the planet called Comcast.
We wouldn't get something like this until at least 2025. For the low low price of $20.25. Per day.
no, no, no. you're looking at it the wrong way! they're giving you the PRIVILEGE of paying 20.25 per day. they are ALLOWING you to overpay for basic services! they're pretty much doing YOU the favor!
/s :P
What's the difference between this and having everything on TV as "on demand?"
Because it's Comcastic™!
You still have to set up the recording. You want to watch Lost? You have to tell it ahead of time and have it "record" it. Supposedly, it will even record you a separate stream than the other 20 people on your block record, but I kinda think that is a load of crap and they will just record it once and copy it and/or stream a common copy. The separate copy for everyone thing is what allowed them to get it past the court in the first place, but come on, we all know how it will really work.
The real difference is that providing content "on demand" requires an additional permission from the copyright holder (and probably extra licensing fees), which is why some shows are not available or only have a few episodes on demand. Cloud DVR is a great loophole to avoid the restrictions and just allow us to watch whatever the hell we want, on demand.
The cable companies will probably still come up with an arbitrary virtual hard drive size and sell you larger "hard drives" in incremental package increases.
Exactly - how is this different from Hulu? They sure as heck don't record a separate copy for every viewer.
Cloud Recording...what next? Rainbow and unicorn storage??
i hope so! i've been looking for a place to keep my unicorns...
More like Sh*tastic™
I am not so sure this is a "win". In the end you will have an IPTV STB that simply streams content from their servers, whether real-time or pre-recorded. There will essentially be no difference between live TV and pre-recorded. The cable company will know everything you watch, and will control the stream, removing the ability to skip commercials. Think Hulu, but with 5 minutes of unskippable commercials instead of 30 seconds.
I thought whatever was bad for the studios, would be good for us consumers.
But when you put it that way... I definitely don't wanna sit through commercials.
DVR was supposed to be freedom from commercials.
So which is the lesser evil...
Everyone go and cobble together media centers and external raid boxes! Screw this crap! I have a 400GB WD Passport attached to my xbox for now, which is a handy way to get video to TV's. Eventually having like a 6TB raid enclosure would be perfect with some kinda media center serving all the TV's simultaneously. Still more reading to do.
Anyone point me in the right direction with the 'streaming to multiple TV's' part?
DVR was not supposed to be freedom from commercials. It was to enable time-shifting. Watch it when you want to watch it, not when they want to show it. As much as everyone complains, commercials are what pay for everything. Remember, you pay $10 - $15 a month extra to get HBO because you watch Entourage. You want to pay $10 - $15/month extra to watch Lost just so that it only takes you 42 minutes instead of 56 minutes?
Seriously, we don't need to watch testicle consumption on broadcast TV, let alone record it for future viewing.