Network DVRs: Lurching Toward TV On Demand

Kevin Maney writes with anticipation: Thankfully, a federal court ruled in favor of the absolute right-headed logic of allowing cable TV companies to offer so-called "network DVR" services. I'd be ready to sign up on the spot.

This is basically TiVo without the box. Everything happens at the cable company's servers. You want to store episodes of Family Guy to watch later, you click a few remote-control buttons and save them on some hard drive miles away. (I'd guess you might get charged different amounts for different amounts of storage space.)

A bunch of content companies -- Disney, Fox, Universal -- had kneejerk sued Cablevision when it tried to create such a service. The court said no dice -- the service does not violate copyrights. Essentially, consumers are storing their own shows to watch later, vs. the cable company offering them on demand -- in which case Cablevision would've had to pay additional fees for the content. All in all, though the result for viewers is kind of a personal on-demand TV service, without having to own hardware.

Which sounds wonderful to me. It should sound wonderful to cable operators and Verizon and DirecTV, since they can now sell DVR services without putting a box in every home. Oh, hmm, that doesn't sound so hot for box makers, like TiVo, Motorola, Scientific-Atlanta.