DVRs, Supreme Court declines to hear remote storage DVR appeal, cloud recording is on the way
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jun 29th 2009 12:53PM
posted Jun 29th 2009 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.
If you forget to record it, even with the RS-DVR you're SOL. The whole argument was that each customer got their own hard drive space for recordings and you had to set up and watch your recording. There is no master recording to share are you can't access someone elses recording.
I think Engadget is more about "smarmy" than "facts".
Good ruling. Nice that all those media company guys that joined the Obama administration came out on the other side, at least this time.
So "fair use" has some grounding. DVRs are legal. Tivo is legal. Network DVRs that are logically identical to DVRs (individual recordings commanded by customer, individual copies stored, etc) are legal.
We'll see how this progresses. First Cablevision has to deploy what they've been arguing for. Then we'll see how that deployment goes. Then Cablevision will comment on their cost savings. Then maybe other MSOs will talk about deploying the same thing.
Then... maybe Cablevision will on its own start talking about a version that doesn't store individual copies, and makes the whole thing more scalable. Will the media companies sue again? Would they win or lose this time? What if the file system still has individual directories with "soft links" to the master copy, or just treats all of this as some form of "directory compression". Eventually, Cablevision will get this ruled legal.
And maybe recording things you didn't ask for, but might like comes along soon. Then recording everything, and allowing you access to all of it.
It will take Y-E-A-R-S, but eventually, this will be a significant step vs. your private DVR.
The Supreme Court's denial of Cert does not constitute a ruling-they don't want to hear the case because there is no constitutional issue involved. This isn't a dead point, the studios could file again next week. Just pointing out: not a ruling and certainly not settled.