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05 Aug 2008
A New York judge has declared legal a service that provides remote access to networked digital video recordings (DVR) from a standard cable TV box.
US cable TV provider Cablevision has won its case in the Second Circuit New York appeals court against a consortium of US content providers, including Fox, Turner, CBS, NBC and ABC.
The judgment has serious implications for programme advertising, say media analysts.
Whereas most DVRs are set-top boxes fitted with a hard disc, Cablevision provides DVR capabilities to TV boxes without hard drives by recording programmes on its own servers and then piping them to subscribers' set-top boxes.
The ruling by Judge Walker overturns a previous finding in March 2007 in favour of the content providers. They argued that Cablevision's service constitutes a video-on-demand service and therefore the company should pay them appropriate licence fees for copying and transmitting copyrighted material.
But Judge Walker decided the service did not violate the content providers' rights.
That means Cablevision can now provide the service to its three million subscribers. But it also means that any other cable company can set up a similar service, making every set-top box a DVR.
Media analysts say that at stake are the millions of dollars of in-programme advertising that owners of DVRs routinely fast-forward through.
Lawyers for the consortium have said they will appeal to the US Supreme Court.
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The tug of war continues
Classic clash of interests between Big Media, the Distributers and us little old consumers. Big Media needs all that advertising to keep profits high (and yes, maybe a little bit to continue producing their ...ahem... 'quality' programming), whereas we consumers are fully justified in wanting to use technology to access said 'quality' programming without the endless ad spam that's assaulted our senses for over 50 years. Digital storage is cheaper then ever and will only continue to get cheaper by all accounts. I think the overwhelming convenience, flexibility and cost effectiveness of being able to store and access what you want, when you want, is a trend that will be very hard for even Big Media to fight against. Maybe the days of ad-based TV viewing are fading away and we'll just end up having to pay the content producers directly in order to view the programs we like. Similar to paying for a dvd box set of 'Season 1, 2 3' of program XYZ. With fiber-to-the-home coming on, in a few years will it really matter where your movie/tv show is coming from? Be it online DVR, set-top DVR, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc. Basically it will all be 'on demand' and preferably commercial-free. Such is the nature of progress, change, innovation, whatever you want to call it. Nothing stays the same, whether your a consumer or producer. A new tech landscape calls for new solutions, business models and so forth. Painful as it may be for any given party.
Posted by: Mik73 05 Aug 2008