September 2, 2008

Network DVR—How Does TiVo Fit into the Mix?

With Cablevision winning a major victory in its quest to launch a remote storage DVR, we've wondered just what possible network DVR proliferation could mean for TiVo, as it has been busy trying to sign software deals like the ones inked with Comcast and Cox. Tom Rogers addressed the question in the DVR company's recent earnings call. "We don't see this ruling having anything to do with our business relationships with the cable world," Rogers assured investors. "We are relating to cable based on our user interface, our search, our overall consumer experience that are independent of where the storage capacity lies, be that in the home, the headend or wherever. In fact, all our work for Comcast is a server-based deployment, and the recording device element of that is not the thrust of why we provide something very substantial and meaningful to cable operators." But Rogers also doesn't think cable has the capacity at this point for a broad scale deployment of a network DVR solution. "For individual HD streams... to be [down]streamed at key viewing times, such as primetime, so that substantial numbers of subscribers could be watching what they want to watch when they want to watch it, is beyond the realm of most cable operators' capacity," Rogers said. And as Glenn Britt and others have said before him, there still are a lot of unresolved legal issues surrounding the CVC case. Earlier this month, the 2nd Circuit Appeals Court reversed a lower court ruling that Cablevision's remote storage DVR would directly infringe on programmers' rights to reproduce their copyrighted works and remanded the case to the Southern District of NY. Programmers and studios who filed the challenge against CVC are expected to appeal.