Have you TiVo'd lately? Chances are that you or someone you know recently has used a digital video recorder to record TV shows that otherwise would have been missed. Or maybe you didn't actually use a TiVo DVR — with competition from other DVR-makers and service providers, TiVo's position in the pop culture lexicon is fading a bit. Still, DVR usage is changing the way people consume entertainment through their TVs, creating a concept that sounds like it's straight from a sci-fi novel — time-shifted living.

“These trends offer evidence of how broadcast content is being time-shifted. You are able to watch what you want when you want to watch it,” said Rick DeGabrielle, president and CEO of Arroyo Networks. “It's more accommodating to the way people live and an evolution in how they relate to their TVs.”

The DVR craze started with a box. Consumers bought one, freed it from its styrofoam cage and probably spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon setting it up and getting all the connections right. More recently, cable TV companies have realized the power of DVR technology and have begun to offer their own DVR services, either through existing set-top boxes in the home or through new boxes that they deliver and install for their residential customers.

“[DVR] is one of those things like microwave TV and Velcro,” said Assaf Dar, vice president of professional services for Infogate. “Once you use it, you say, ‘How did I ever live without this?’”

However, for service providers, the maintenance and manpower involved in providing such as service is a considerable operational and capital cost. A few years ago, a new idea emerged about how to provide that service while eliminating the costs of providing and maintaining a home-based device. That concept, network-based (or sometimes, simply “networked') personal video recording (NPVR) is an innovation that speaks to the very core of the kinds of benefits that modern cable TV systems and telco IPTV systems can provide for their users.

With an NPVR service, each customer gets private storage space on a network server owned and operated by the service provider. They interface with the service as they would a home-based DVR box, using their remote control to navigate on-screen programming schedules to schedule recordings of various TV shows, even shows that have already run but are still stored on the service provider's network.

“It's just like having a DVR in your home, only the DVR isn't in your home, but on the network,” DeGabrielle said. In most cases, he said, service providers will allot the same amount of storage capacity per user that those customers would likely get from a set-top DVR. That probably means about 80 Gbytes, though DeGabrielle said network operators could differentiate themselves by offering more. They also would have the flexibility to adjust the NPVR service to high-definition or super-high-definition as their customers purchased new TV sets.

Although the NPVR idea first surfaced a few years ago, it wasn't universally accepted at first. Even though service providers could save money on home-based products and potential truck rolls, it required them to deploy additional network server space.

“There is no clear cut ROI model,” Dar said. “A lot of the service providers are facing the challenge of muddling through this ROI. There are no clear cut parameters. If you invest in network PVR, the network needs to be beefed up. I don't think anyone has come up with a business model that says if you have 100 users, you should put this amount into the network.”

Also, the legal ramifications of allowing users to record and store content on carrier networks weren't clear. Content providers felt there could be licensing issues, and cable TV companies that considered doing NPVR services feared potential lawsuits. Even now, it's not clear how service provider/content provider partnerships need to be restructured to accommodate NPVRs.

“How do all those contracts get renegotiated? That's the biggest issue right now,” said Ken Morrison, product manager for Scientific-Atlanta. “When we look at it, it went through a phase where it was the hottest topic of the week and then it went quiet because people had to execute on the business model. For the first time it's back in the business model of content relationships.”

To date, a few cable TV companies and international IPTV players have dabbled with NPVR services. In the U.S. market, Time Warner launched its Start Over service last year. Morrison said of Start Over, “It's kind of a crawl, walk, run approach. I think it's really a testing of the waters to get the content people comfortable with it. You have to demonstrate that it's not going to decimate their business models.”

More recently, Cablevision Systems talked about pursuing a trial of an NPVR system — what it called a “remote storage” DVR service — this year. The company said it would provide 80 Gbytes of personal disk storage space on a network-based server for each of a group of test users.

Mike Paxton, a senior analyst in the converging markets and technologies group at In-Stat, who followed Cablevision's announcement, wrote in a research note that the company “readily acknowledged that past attempts to start up network-based PVR services had failed due to content protection and copyright disagreements with TV programmers and movie studios. However, the cable operator also stated that they believed their system would be considered ‘fair use’ of programming as defined by the 1984 Sony Betamax copyright case. The Betamax case stated that it was legal for TV viewers to record and replay TV shows on their VCRs, without seeking permission from the copyright holder, as long as the recording was for personal use only. The ruling is often cited as the legal basis for MP3 downloads, CD burners and virtually all in-home PVR products.”

Still, Paxton said it's not clear that the content community will give Time Warner and Cablevision free passes. As the NPVR idea gets more popular, content providers could issue a legal challenge.

The current NPVR efforts by cable TV companies certainly will have some bearing on how quickly telcos pursuing the IPTV business launch similar services. Arroyo's DeGabrielle said NPVR services will fit nicely with the video-on-demand service enabled by IPTV technology. “NPVR allows you to record anything on the schedule, and VOD allows you to purchase any programming you want, so I think you'll see some bundling going on,” he said.

Still, telcos may need to tip-toe around the content community as they launch these services, especially because telcos don't have the legacy relationships with programmers that the cable TV companies do.

“I wouldn't say they're going to be comfortable with it,” DeGabrielle said. “But this is a part of what will help service providers give their customers a more personalized option that is service-based, not product-based.”