Not to be outdone by Dish’s Hopper and SuperJoey, TiVo announced a new, cloud-based network digital video recorder at CES. The company is known for their range of DVRs, and the new Network DVR Cloud prototype aims to bring the efficiency of the original DVR to the cloud-based content that consumers are becoming accustomed to. Whereas with a traditional DVR Media content is typically stored in a subscriber’s set-top box hard drive, the NDVR stores media content in the service provider’s servers – the cloud. It also means that viewers can share content in the cloud to other authorized users, set up co-viewing experiences through social networks, as well as recommendations via cloud-based libraries. In short, keeping the content in the cloud, rather than on a hard drive, allows the data to be much more social and flexible.
At the same time, TiVo plans to let operators and programmers manage content rights, create multiscreen policies and various tiers of network personal video recording features, so it seems like the move will seek to benefit both producers and consumers alike.
