Comcast and Time Warner Cable on Thursday threw their support behind fellow cable operator Cablevision’s plan to offer a digital video recording service that can replace DVR boxes.
The proposed new service will allow cable TV subscribers to record programs on Cablevision Systems’ network servers, doing away with the need for digital video recorder boxes made by companies like TiVo and Cisco Systems’ Scientific-Atlanta.
Cablevision said Monday that the service it called RS-DVR (remote-storage digital video recorder) would help cut costs, such as for installing and repairing DVR boxes.
Of course they claim this is just to save money and cut costs. But by getting rid of the boxes end-users are under the complete control of the cable companies. Do you want to skip past commericals? They might let you. Do you want to move some shows to your DVD burner? Mmm… not very likely.
One caveat John, the SA version of the DVR is one of the most popular products on the market for cable companies. The network infrastructure to replace it would be much, much more expensive than the cost of the devices.
The devices cost the companies aobut $600-$700 and run a version of Solaris. Way easier to use than TiVo and SA has a version in the works that has a DVD burner.
Reuters description of Maestro is not exactly accurate, either. I doubt you will see a feature that would prevent fast forwarding thru commercials. That capability is way too popular with consumers.
The Cablecard feature still should give folks a chance to rule their set-top. TiVo has a next-gen box coming out [real soon, now] that will have cablecard, networking, etc..
Now, if the law requiring cablecards only extended to satellite boxes, it would be easier to get around the crappy software in next-gen boxes from Dish and DirecTV.
Emery — a couple of advantages folks prefer with the TiVo flavor is [1] 3-speed fast forward and [2] though unofficial, everyone finds the backdoor and hacks the 30-second jump into fast forward. Makes it easy as pie to skip commercials.
I just dropped Comcast yesterday for DirectTV. I’m not into TV enough to consider a TiVo box. However just as a footnote DirectTV offers a DVR box as well.
“I doubt you will see a feature that would prevent fast forwarding thru commercials. That capability is way too popular with consumers.”
Once the competition is gone and your the only game in town, you can pretty much do anything you want. It doesn’t matter if the consumer likes it or not.
Recording locally is a lot better. I’ve had a DVR in the past and it worked well. I watch a lot of shows of the In-demand channels now. They work well except when you want to fast forward and rewind. The delay between pushing the button and the system responding is so long it makes it near impossible to accurately use the feature. I really miss my VCR.
Charter has yet to roll out DVR’s in my area. In fact the last time I inquired about it, I was told the company was exploring alternative technology. I’m using an old ReplayTV that’s having some problems, and I was waiting to replace it with a cable provided box instead of buying a new unit and additional service. Digital decoder boxes probably give little problems, but throw in a hard drive and I imagine the maintenance cost does rise significantly. They control the software on their boxes anyway, so does it matter if the files are stored locally or on a remote server? This is just the TV on demand they’ve been promising for 20 years.
You know ever time we seem to take a few steps forward with technology that would actually improve television viewing the fat cable and carrier cats propose this abaolutely insulting and useless technology.
First, PVRs offer the viewer to record and store what they want the FIRST time is comes down the pipe. What these id10ts are proposing is let us store it for you and then use YOUR BANDWIDTH to show it to you again.
This will lead to the old ” your bandwidth is costing us money” so pay up or you can’t watch last night’s episode of American Id10t! Sound like fair-use licensing to me.
What a complete waste of techology and bandwidth. Weren’t some of these guys complaining a few months ago about all the bandwidth that Google and them are using.
What the hell kind of bandwidth do they think stupid system like this is going to consumer. Unbelievable… if its not an April Fool’s Joke!
This would be a nice feature for watching old episodes of shows that you hadn’t previously been recording. Since I’m sure the cable company will be recording and storing any and all content, you could have a season pass for everything. If you discover a show weeks or even months into the season, this would make a fairly easy to view older episodes without having to seek out other, less than legal, sources.
Its also a control issue. They can prevent, delete, cripple anything show or special they want. With comcast’s DVR they already don’t let you record PPV, while if you had a Tivo, you could. And once all the power is with the cable company, how much freedom do you really think you will have. With low profile programing, it probably would be the same as Tivo, but with high profile, prime time programing, I could see features such as skip ahead being disabled, limited time for program retention or with some show, no recording at all. The entertainment industry does not like time shifting, it take away their control and no one likes that.
I have had my DVR for Two Years from DISH, My mom has one from them as well. I have never had any maintence done to it at all or needed it.
I don’t see how this is going to save money, the cost of the servers, the people to admin them, oh and not to mention the cost of redundency. Right now IF something goes wrong on my drive I loose a show(not that it has remember) if something goes wrong on one of their systems we all loose the show.
My DVR supports two television too, one small problem if both T.V.s are watching the same show off the drive and one of you skips ahead you do get a sound chunk that goes missing somehow. I imagine their will be one file saved for each show recorded, no matter how many houses recorded it. Can we all watch the same stream at the same time and move around in the recording without effecting anyone else. The technology says you can, we will see if it works.
I can imagine the amount of time it takes from the moment you click back 10 seconds how long it will take to get the 10 second jump to show up – if it’ to long and too many people complain – they will just drop that feature.
I have DirecTV and I’m happy with my 800 channels (All channels including premium and sport channels, minus adult and spanish).
Now if they want to eliminate DVR, at least they should be allowing PVR kits.
@Eideard
Are you thinking of moving to the Tivo Series 3? We’ve talked about the phone bill blues tied to our respective DirecTV systems in the past, and this would eliminate them… at the cost of moving to cable from D*.
I’m seriously considering it. I’d be sold if the Series 3 could stream video and music off of a network share (eliminating the need for other hardware – In my case, hooking my MacBook Pro to my home theather and my Airport Express).
James — I was thinking pretty seriously about it till ~3 wks ago. My cable broadband svce from Comcast has been reliable; so, I figured I’d stop by the local office to ask content questions.
When push comes to shove, that’s what decides our service. Anyway, to make an [inevitably] long story short, they don’t have — and apparently won’t — a couple of sources critical to my TV viewing. D* does. EOS.
I’m waiting to see what the HR20 DVR will be like. The D* hi-def forum [at avsforums] gives mostly good reviews in terms of pix quality for the H20 hi-def receiver. Since the hi-def DVR will be pretty much a free swap for my HR10-250, I figure I’ll wait and try it.
As an owner of a Scientific Atlanta DVR and a TiVO, I can say that the Tivo is far superior. When faced with the option of replacing my old TiVo, even though the DVR worked out to be the same monthly, though FREE as compared to a $250 TiVo, I would definitely pay for the TiVo.
Programming is much better with the TiVo (Easier to program from the remote PLUS gives you Web-based programming options)
If you haven’t tried both, go to a friend’s and use theirs. Try the following:
– fast foward through commercials on both. The Tivo jumps back so you don’t miss anything. The DVR stops as soon as you hit the button so you’re sometimes as much as 1 minute into the program and then have to rewind.
– Program a recording. On the TIVO you spell your show, or just click RECORD when it’s highlighted in the channel listings (Tivo offers multiple formats of the listing). The DVR has a ver user-unfriendly way to find programs requiring you to know the exact day/time or scroll through every “L” program before coming to LOST (shameless plug)
TiVo is FAR superior to the SA DVRs. Lets see if SA can improve upon them.