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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.

Supreme Court queues network DVR decision for later

by Richard Lawler posted Jan 13th 2009 at 6:40PM

Just like you haven't worked through all four hours of this season of 24 yet, the U.S. Supreme Court is pushing back a decision on Cablevision's network DVR a.k.a. Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder to ask the Justice Department for their thoughts. The cable companies (and others) looking to roll out this service scored a win in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals a few months ago, but this push back is being considered by at least one analyst as a slight victory for their opponents. Whether you side with the cable companies (and all those who found that their cable was grainy on Tuesday night during CES, resulting in unwatchable saved eps of Scrubs & The Mentalist and many, many tears) or the Hollywood studios claiming this would violate their copyright, grab a Snickers. It could take up to several months for the Justice Department to file a brief, at which time the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear the case at all.

Cablevision, common sense win network DVR appeal

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

CablevisionThe 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.




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