Buy a Tivo with a very long cord

I recall a few years ago, we were doing a piece of work on re-engineering the "VoD" market (nowadays it would be called VoD 2.0 I guess). Anyway, it quickly became clear that having everybody buy a PVR was economically nuts, compared to centralizing it as a VoD type service.

The reason this was not done was commercial risk - any organisation that was recording the service for its customers was liable for legal action, never mind the opprobrium that the Ad industry would heap on them.

So I read today in the NYT that the law has been overturned, you now can run a PVR webservice.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York said Monday that the so-called network DVR, which records programs on a faraway computer rather than on the device itself, does not violate copyright law.

The ruling, a turning point in a two-year legal battle, represented a major victory for Cablevision, which wants to offer network DVR services through its existing set-top boxes. It also dealt a significant blow to the media companies that had sued to stop the technology, which include Turner Broadcasting and the major TV networks.

Expect appeals all the way to the floor of the Oval office though, it will clearly be a time for lobbyists to earn their lunch money.

One the thing that has changed in the time since we did the work is that PVR penetration has moved from c 5% to c 25% of US homes, maybe that made the incumbent's arguments harder to justify. This should drive it far higher - 50%+ over 3 years we would estimate roughly.

An interesting thing to watch is what will companies do about Ad skipping - the whole interactive, online advertising industry has come up from near-zero since when we looked at this the last time, so there are quite a lot of interesting potential opportunities......which will be needed, because as ell as recording shows, PVR's are still used as Ad-Avoidance devices.