Peer to Peer DVR
NDS, the maker of DirecTV’s DVR, announced this week
a distributed or peer-to-peer DVR for its IPTV middleware product. NDS is a DVR manufacturer for DirecTV.
NDS’ distributed DVR system doesn’t have a hard drive in the set-top-box, but uses the space on a home network. NDS says that the lack of a hard drive can make for a lower priced STB enabling subscribers to upgrade their storage at any time.
At the same time, NDS’ ShareTV line allows IPTV subscribers to share their stored TV content using peer-to-peer technology using NDS’ Jungo Residential Gateway software. So if someone misses the lastest episode of Lost, for example, they can request it from another user and download it on their home network.
Later editions of the ReplayTV family of DVRs allowed this capabilities, but it did not sit well with content owners and TV studios. However, NDS says that its digital rights management (DRM) technology allows only valid users to share and transfer content to portable devices, for example.
According to Jupiter Research, these products can help telco providers to lower costs while providing innovative DVR features. Hopefully, companies will continue to innovate in the DVR space, and make these standard features.
[Via Engadget]
[Or the Press Release in PDF.]
NDS, Tivo, digital video recorder, PVR, DVR, P2P, News Corp.
February 5th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
This sounds like a cool idea, although BitTorrent is easier, LOL!
But, It’s just the fact that those stupid Networks will go crazy over this. Even if everything appears to be legit they’ll throw a fit just because they can.
The smart TV network would get behind something like this, maybe even buy the company, and pimp it out.