Yet another lawsuit—this time between Viacom and Cablevision – was started today. Reuters reports that the alleged culprit, Cablevision, is being accused of “unauthorised streaming of [Viacom's]programming on devices such as Apple Inc’s iPad”. More »
Right on the heels of the Time Warner/Viacom debacle, Cablevision’s live TV-streaming app has now gotten caught in the crosshairs too. More »
The real victims in the ongoing spat between Cablevision and News Corp? Phillies fans, who were denied from watching Tuesday night’s playoff game on Fox. Until the FCC stepped in with live Twitter updates from the game. More »
Hollywood apparently tried to make a federal case about Cablevision launching a virtual DVR, a cable box with no local hard drive that still lets you “record” shows to watch later, and even fast forward through commercials. Hollywood studios got mad because they deemed it unfair re-broadcasting of content. The Supreme Court looked at the case and took a pass—by not hearing it, they are allowing Cablevision and others to proceed with development unhindered. I like the concept of a driveless DVR, but I don’t like the cable company keeping my shows—stuff I’ve already recorded—under lock and key. [NY Times]
Waaay back in 2006, Cablevision planned to roll out a DVR which stored shows on Cablevision’s servers rather than on hard disk inside your set-top box. As they are wont to do, the studios and networks saw an opportunity to suck more revenue out of the system, citing obscure copyright conditions which call for fees when content is “retransmitted” in any way. Now, a judge has smacked down their suit to block remote-storage DVRs, meaning DVRs in the cloud could see the light of day after all.
I guess Cablevision was feeling a little left out after the WiMaxMegaZord became official with Comcast and Time on board, because they’re planning to drop US$350 million on a wireless broadband network for New York. It’ll basically be a big Wi-Fi network initially (free for customers), though Cablevision says “ultimately it will be a mobile voice-capable network.” Which is the real peg: a quadruple play option with bundled wireless (now just to compete w/ TWC and Comcast, let alone wireless companies). At least hopefully, since a US$350 million glorified Wi-Fi network isn’t gonna get ‘em very far. [Yahoo!]
