Cablevision, a US company, is going ahead with plans to release its ‘remote PVR’ early next year.

Unlike regular PVRs, Cablevision proposed a service which would allow customers to record programmes on a server at the cable operator rather than at home. This would enable the operator to also offer the service to customers who have a regular set-top box rather than just those with a PVR.

The Studios had maintained that saving copies of the video away from the viewers’ homes violated licensing rights by duplicating the work, calling into question notions of fair use.
However in August the appeals court ruled Cablevisions network PVR does not directly infringe copyright rules and should be given the same protection normal hard drive based PVRs are given.

Designed to run off its set top boxes, the network PVR removes the incremental cost of PVR hard drives. There is no expensive fleet deliveries or installers as the system runs on the network. Buyng centralised storage in bulk is cheaper than deploying isolated ‘at home’ hard drives for every PVR subscriber.

The industry will be watching how this will effect Tivo, and how they react will be interesting. Tivo recently recorded a profit for only the third time in their history. The recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling supporting the efforts of cable TV firms and telcos to operate remote storage-DVR, could limit future success prospects for Tivo.