Iceland's IPTV Market
March 2007
Iceland Telecom (now called Siminn) says that it has deployed IPTV around the entire country with over 50% of its 52,000 DSL customers subscribing to the TV service.
In November 2004, Siminn launched its IPTV service in 10 towns around Iceland and by late 2005 it began offering full IPTV services with more than 60 channels, and VOD. Siminn is using Thomson middleware, Thales SmartVision broadband service platform and IBM servers.
For more information, consult our: MRG, Inc., March 2007 IPTV Bulletin
Cablevision Loses Network DVR Lawsuit
March 2007
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against Cablevision’s attempt to launch a network digital video recorder. Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios, Paramount Pictures, Disney, CBS, ABC, NBC Studios, Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network and CNN sued Cablevision in May 2006 claiming that its network DVR (called RS-DVR) would violate copyright laws.
The judge ruled that a remote-storage DVR would allow Cablevision and its customers to engage “in unauthorized reproductions and transmissions of plaintiffs' copyrighted programs.”
“The RS-DVR is not a stand-alone machine that sits on top of a television,” Chin wrote. “Rather, it is a complex system that involves an ongoing relationship between Cablevision and its customers, payment of monthly fees by the customers to Cablevision, ownership of the equipment remaining with Cablevision, the use of numerous computers and other equipment located in Cablevision's private facilities and the ongoing maintenance of the system by Cablevision personnel.”
Network DVRs lets users store TV shows on a provider’s network rather than on individual set-top-box hard drives. The judge ruled that recordings on a remote hard drive would be unauthorized reproductions.
The studios argued that because Cablevision was hosting the video on its servers, it wasn’t a network DVR, but a video-on-demand service and Cablevision needed permission to “rebroadcast” the programs.
Cablevision argued that its network DVR would not violate copyright laws since it works similar to DVRs in customers’ homes. In fact, Cablevision said it would dedicate separate storage space for each subscriber. In other words, if 500 subscribers decided to record the TV show “Lost,” there would be 500 separate copies saved on the Cablevision network.
Cablevision said it is reviewing the opinion and assessing all of its options, including an appeal.
Content providers are evidently trying to protect their content and possibly try to get TV operators to negotiate separate fees for implementing network DVRs. At the same time TV providers are trying to save money by deploying less expensive set-top boxes to customers and using their own network storage.
Meanwhile, the court decision is good news for TiVo, as well as set-top box makers like Scientific Atlanta and Motorola. As DVRs evolve and become more mainstream, however, it will be difficult to separate VOD from DVR functions. If Cablevision appeals, network DVRs in the U.S. may still be up in the air, however.
{Note: analyst comments are italicized}
For more information, consult our: MRG, Inc., March 2007 IPTV Bulletin
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