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cablevision posts

Supreme Court declines to hear remote storage DVR appeal, cloud recording is on the way

by Richard Lawler posted Jun 29th 2009 at 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.

Cablevision on track to deliver Network DVR this Summer

by Ben Drawbaugh posted May 20th 2009 at 2:21PM

We all want the same thing right? The ability to watch any show we want, whenever we want, and wherever we want. Sounds easy, but even in this day and age to achieve this easily isn't possible. Currently there are a few ways this might happen down the road, and one that looks to be coming our way sooner rather than later is Cablevision's Network DVR. While a traditional DVR has a hard drive in it to store your shows, the Network DVR wouldn't. Instead it would stream the content from a centralized data store, like VOD. You'd still have to pre-schedule your recordings and presumably you'd still have a set limit, but ordering DVR service wouldn't require a new box and best of all, you should have access to all the same content in any room of the house. This has been in the making for a long time now -- three years actually -- but Hollywood has been tying it up in court. Luckily the courts have been on Cablevision's side, but it does appear that the consumer may still get the shaft. That's because it seems there's a chance that the Network DVR won't let you fast forward through commercials, which would obviously make it a show stopper for most.

Cablevision loves you, will offer $99 101Mbps uncapped internet service

by Nilay Patel posted Apr 28th 2009 at 12:59PM

It's been a rough week or so for Big Cable, but it looks like the East Coast's Cablevision's decided to play things a little differently than Comcast and Time Warner: it's just announced that uncapped 101Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service will be rolling out on May 11 across its entire service area. The best part? It'll cost $99 a month, making it faster and cheaper than any other high-speed package we can think of -- 50Mbps service from Comcast and Verizon is around $140. Not bad at all -- let's hope the competition picks up on it.

[Via Electronista]

Cablevision, common sense win network DVR appeal

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 4th 2008 at 2:56PM

The process took over a year, but it looks like common sense prevailed in Cablevision's appeal of its network-DVR copyright infringement case. You might remember that Cablevision had planned to roll out "remote-storage" DVRs a couple years ago that would play programs off Cablevision servers instead of storing shows locally, but shelved the plan when the networks sued over the concept, claiming that separating content storage from playback would essentially constitute rebroadcast and infringe on their copyrights. The networks won the first round, but it seems like the technical distinction between local and remote storage wasn't enough to convince the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that Cablevision was "broadcasting" anything -- the court just lifted the injunction barring Cablevision from supplying remote DVRs to its customers. We're still big fans of managing our own content locally, but this is definitely a win for the consumer, as it'll mean cheaper equipment costs and hopefully a larger selection of media available on demand -- too bad we're also betting that the networks will try and appeal this one to the Supreme Court.

Cablevision joins the wireless party, plans to cover NYC with WiFi

by Nilay Patel posted May 8th 2008 at 8:11PM

Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House all threw down in the new Sprint-led Clearwire venture yesterday, but it looks like Cablevision wants in on the fun as well: the company announced today that it's spending $350M on a new wireless broadband network in New York. Unlike the Clearwire partnership, Cablevision is apparently going to use straight-up WiFi for the service, but it's not revealing any details at the moment, saying only that it'll run at 1.5Mbps and eventually handle voice as well. The plan is to get up and running in NYC within two years, and existing customers will be able to log on for free -- and if this really is straight-up WiFi, we'd bet a lot of other people will be joining the fun as well.

Switched On: Hollywood's remote control turns revenue off

by Ross Rubin posted Mar 30th 2007 at 5:32PM

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

Last week's Switched O n compared two devices that only peripherally compete with each other today, but which represent different approaches to acquiring TV shows. In a fit of serendipity, the arrival of the Apple TV occurred just as Cablevision's remote DVR service (RS-DVR) got the smackdown from a U.S. District Court. I am not a lawyer, but I can understand the rationale. RS-DVR is a video equivalent of the music locker service that MP3.com tried at the beginning of 2000. A CNET article written slightly after that service's launch noted:

MP3.com admits that it has created a database of some 45,000 unlicensed CDs that it serves through its My.MP3.com accounts. But company executives argue that it is toeing the legal line by offering tracks under the "fair use" exemption of the copyright law, which allows consumers to make copies for personal use.

Now, substitute "Cablevision" for "MP3.com, "TV shows" for "45,000 unlicensed CDs," and "RS-DVR service" for "My.MP3.com accounts." Cablevision's legal defense differed from that of MP3.com's, though. Trying to leverage the established legality of DVRs, it claimed to offer the equivalent of a legally protected DVR device, whereas the court found that RS-DVR was a service -- not a device. Consumers lose because RS-DVR could have enabled cheaper deployment not only of basic virtual DVR service but of long-delayed advances such as virtual multi-room DVR.
Which, interestingly, brings us back to Apple TV.

Continue reading Switched On: Hollywood's remote control turns revenue off

Cablevision loses networked DVR case

by Erik Hanson posted Mar 23rd 2007 at 1:13PM

Cablevision once had dreams of keeping all your recorded shows on a network-based DVR system, which would have kept them from having to send boxes to all their subscribers. Then Hollywood and the TV networks stepped in with the lawyers last May, and here we are today, with a ruling that this would have broken copyright rules by effectively "rebroadcasting" the programs. The cable operator is considering an appeal, although Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, TiVo, and other DVR manufacturers are likely relieved that their revenue streams are firmly intact.

Verizon FiOS hitting 50Mbps in more states

by Darren Murph posted Jan 11th 2007 at 3:45PM

Sure, it's not quite 100Mpbs, but hey, the folks in Massachusetts and Rhode Island will probably take what they can get. Verizon has just announced that Massachusetts and Rhode Island have now joined New York, Connecticut and New Jersey as states where Verizon "has increased the maximum connection speed of both its mid-tier and top-tier FiOS Internet services." Previously, their mid-range connection topped out at 15Mbps downstream and a paltry 2Mbps upstream, while the high-end package offered just 30Mbps up and 5Mbps down. Basically no other details were given, but Verizon did state that it planned on bringing similar speed boosts to "11 other states where the service is available" during the course of this year, but didn't mention any type of price decreases from the admittedly lofty monthly charges top-tier customers currently pay. Now, how about we get FiOS to more homes before giving all the lucky ones even more bandwidth to play with next time you get the itch to upgrade, okay Verizon?

[Via GigaOM]

Cable giants being sued for VOD patent infringement

by Evan Blass posted Jun 17th 2006 at 9:32AM

If nothing else, you've got to admire the tenacity of a Connecticut-based firm called USA Video Interactive, which just days after losing what seems to be a final appeal in its lawsuit against Movielink, decided to go after almost all of the country's major cable operators for supposedly infringing on the same patent. Comcast, Cox, Charter, and Time Warner (disclosure: Time Warner owns the company that owns the network that includes Engadget) are all named in a suit filed Tuesday in a U.S. District Court in Texas by USA Video (maybe Cablevision got spared because of all its other legal woes), which claims that like Movielink, the cable giants are violating its so-called Store-and-Forward Video-on-Demand patent (#5,130,792, filed in 1990) by using protected technology in their own VOD services. Besides making patents, the company also offers various products revolving around email, web tools, digital video watermarking, and content delivery infrastructure, so it's probably not appropriate to bunch it in with other lawsuit-happy -- but seemingly less legitimate -- claimants such as NTP and Visto.

[Via TechWeb and Digital Media Thoughts]

Cablevision postpones networked DVR

by Evan Blass posted Jun 9th 2006 at 8:40AM

Under heavy pressure in the form of a lawsuit filed by nearly all of TV land's major content providers, industry giant Cablevision has announced that it will delay the rollout of its networked DVR offering until the service's legality is confirmed in court. The lawsuit, filed by the four key networks and their parent studios, claims that Cablevision's plan to store customers' recorded swag on their own servers as opposed to local set-top boxes constitutes a retransmission of copyrighted material, and therefore violates pre-existing agreements the company has with its providers. Cablevision, on the other hand, argues that networked DVR services are only facilitating "fair-use" of their broadcasts by consumers, who have already paid for any programs they intend to record. The outcome of this suit will be closely monitored by other players in the cable industry as well, because a victory for Cablevision would allow Cox, Comcast, et al. to begin offering their own remote storage -- good news for consumers, but perhaps bad news for our old friend TiVo.

More networks suing Cablevision over networked DVR

by Evan Blass posted May 31st 2006 at 2:15PM

Trouble is brewing in TV land, and the stakes couldn't be higher for consumers, as a lawsuit filed by many of your favorite content providers against industry giant Cablevision could determine the future of networked DVR services. Two Time Warner networks (disclaimer: Engadget's parent company's parent company's parent company is Time Warner), CNN and Cartoon Network, have joined Disney, Universal, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox in fighting Cablevision's plan to offer subscribers the option of recording their programming to the company's servers, arguing that allowing at-will remote access to stored content constitutes a re-transmission, and therefore violates copyright agreements. What makes Time Warner's entry into the fray particularly interesting is the fact that another one of its divisions, Time Warner Cable, has publicly expressed interest in the concept of networked DVR, meaning that either outcome of the lawsuit would be potentially beneficial to the company. Way to go guys, you can never go wrong playing both sides of the fence.

Surprise! TV networks sue Cablevision for Network DVR

by Paul Miller posted May 25th 2006 at 7:05AM

We sure didn't see this coming at all. Seems the TV networks Fox, Universal, Paramount, Disney, CBS, ABC and NBC aren't really so pleased about the "Network DVR" offering from Cablevision, and have taken the issue up in a lawsuit. Cablevision's plan to have remote storage DVR does blur the line a bit between personal recording use and straight up license-free on demand service, but they think they're in the right with Network DVR, and that the lawsuit is "without merit." As for the networks' thoughts, we haven't seen the exact accusations yet, but we can take a wild guess. Cablevision is banking on a bit of TiVo legitimacy, and we have a small fear that a decision on this issue could spill over and affect the use of traditional DVRs. But if they do manage to pull this one off, it looks like other cable providers are lining up to follow suit.