Cablevision had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court in order to make its remote storage DVR (RS-DVR) into a reality. Now that it has done so, the company shows little inclination to pacify rightsholders upset about the technology. The ability to fast-forward through commercials will remain a key piece of the service.

RS-DVR technology moves the video recording technology from a box sitting beside your TV into the network. Cablevision runs major servers at its headends which stream their user interface down the cable line and onto people's TV sets. Apart from some lag, the system works like a home DVR—but without the millions of individual boxes, the truck rolls for installation, the service calls when something goes wrong, and the like. For Cablevision, it saves money.

One consequence of all the court battles concerning the RS-DVR is that Cablevision is required to create and then store an individual copy of every program recorded by every customer. In other words, the system cannot simply record one copy of The Simpsons and then string it out to everyone who requests it. This would amount to an authorized retransmission of TV content.

Instead, Cablevision had to set up the system in such a way that it mirrors exactly the traditional DVR functionality; customers must individually choose what shows to record and the system must keep separate copies of those shows. On a conference call for investors yesterday, Cablevision executives admitted that this did raise costs slightly, but said it was still cheaper than rolling out boxes to every home.

And if the company has to mimic traditional DVR technology to stay legal, it plans to maintain a key DVR advantage: the ability to fast-forward through commercials. When an analyst on the call asked whether Cablevision plans to disable this ability in order to placate the broadcasters, the response was unequivocal: "We do have that option, but we're going to make it work as a consumer product like a physical DVR."

Still, the question reminds us of how much control we have surrendered over our devices. Services that move into the network, such as the RS-DVR, can have functionality altered at a moment's notice. But running a home DVR doesn't give much additional control, either; firmware updates for consumer electronics are now routine, and Sony has recently reminded us that advertised features may be removed at any time.

Analysts at Pike & Fischer note that fast-forwarding "creates a Catch-22 for Cablevision. Content owners worry that moving the DVR functions to the headend will entice more and more pay TV customers to time-shift their television viewing and skip over commercials. For consumers, ad skipping is one of the most enticing benefits of digital video recording. But by offering a service that has the potential to dilute ad revenues, programmers have all the more reason to charge Cablevision higher retransmission fees."