Comments on: Network DVR vs. Remote-Storage DVR

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:22:20 +0000

Fanfoot, beyond Mari’s bias disclaimer I’ll add one of the cool things about the way she blogs here AND on Motorola’s site is her interest in and commentary on the broader industry beyond solely Moto products and marketing. She loves this stuff.

And you frequently do a pretty good job keeping a neutral perspective, as well. (Work is a four letter word.)

By: ZeoTiVo

ZeoTiVo — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:48:59 +0000

could they just have people sign a form saying they want to record everything That way they work to scale the back end to a reasonable level and the person gets on demand for whatever period of time the content provider allows. That would truly work for 50% or more of most TV viewers.

As for TiVo – I currently record mainly SD analog so I can easily pass shows around to the 3 TVs we have in the house and the kids get to pick what records on the SD H400 in the bonus room. I like the idea of extenders and would love if TiVo added standard protocols so that things like Roku could pick them up – but can they play the TiVo format directly and do decryption – cause if not then transfer to a Roku or whatever becomes like a TiVoToGo transfer and slows way down. Not good for an extender. This is before the business problems of the fact they sell less multi subscriptions to a house and how many new subs do they pick up because of the new feature?

By: Mari Silbey

Mari Silbey — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:43:30 +0000

It’s always reasonable to assume that I have some bias given that I work for Motorola. But in this case, Motorola also has RS-DVR technology. Frankly I’m just interested in how the video networks are going to end up being re-architected. It fascinates me how Internet and cable delivery are looking more and more similar, even when we’re not talking about IP packets.

By: Fanfoot

Fanfoot — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:36:50 +0000

If Cablevision could have built an nDVR and got away with it, of course they would have. But they wanted to increase their chances of winning the expected lawsuit, so they made it as much like a DVR in the user’s house as possible, which meant that each user has to have their own copy.

I assume that once the issue is resolved by the Supreme Court, assuming the result is in Cablevision’s favor, the media companies & Cablevision will work something out. And once they do that, a more normal implementation with only one copy of each program recorded, regardless of how many people ask for it, could be coming. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Mari, since RS-DVR is built by one of your competitors (e.g. Cisco) can we really assume your commentary here is unbiased?

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:27:19 +0000

“…Remote-Storage DVR (RS-DVR) rather than Network DVR (nDVR) to describe the technology Cablevision has proposed…Cablevision may one day soon launch RS-DVR rather than true nDVR…or network-based DVR services (NB-DVRS)…”

“…MB CD-R – a DVD-R has 6.4 times the capacity of a CD-R. Pioneer has also developed an 8.54 GB dual layer version, DVD-R DL…Data on a DVD-R cannot be changed, whereas a DVD-RW (DVD-rewritable) can be rewritten multiple (1000+) times. DVD-R(W) is one of three competing industry standard DVD recordable formats; the others are DVD+R(W) and DVD-RAM…”

*faints*

By: georgec

georgec — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:32:08 +0000

I’d love for Roku to be an “extender” for TiVo. The “TiVo Channel”.

I avoid cable company products and services at all costs. Every time I try something new, inevitably, the bill comes with more costs than was supposed to. My wife detests the thought of a skanky cable guy in our house.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:50:14 +0000

Now, to make life even more fun, back the RS-DVR infrastructure with a storage subsystem which does automatic block-level or file-level deduplication.

your storage requirements go back down to sane levels

See, among others, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication

By: Adam Thursby

Adam Thursby — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:42:10 +0000

Good explanation of the differences but I’ll stick with my Media Center, thanks. No matter which solution a cable company would go with there’s one thing to consider: What do you watch when the cable is out? Now, if my service drops, I have full access to all of my recordings. With something like this (which to be honest I didn’t know cable companies were looking at) when service drops you don’t even have that to fall back on.

No thanks.