UK set top box maker Pace spent last week showing off its first multiroom DVR at a US cable show called the CTAM Summit.
Essentially the holy grail for DVRs for these past three years has been the creation of a box which can store HD programs on a hard disk and ship them around a home for ANY TV in the house to view them ‘ hence the term multiroom DVR (digital video recorder).
Pace calls its new device the Home Content Sharing system and it’s not like any DVR we ever saw. What it does it allows the tuner in a stand alone set top (not existing set tops, new designs but cheap) to tune a program, then send it to what is effectively a dynamic home media server, a huge chunk of centralized disk storage. The system comes integrated with Rovi’s Interactive Program Guide (IPG) and Connected Platform software. Rovi is the new name for Macrovision merged with Gemstar.
Pace claims its multiroom DVR is the first in the market, and it is, using this approach. The first multiroom DVRs were built for AT&T U-Verse and were effectively normal DVRs which could speak to other TVs in other rooms. Pace reckons there are some issues with that design approach, and it may have a point. Pace’s approach is clearly very different. It works by using a home NAS (Network Attached Storage) device centrally, rather than a central DVR which is inside a set top.
Pace of course had to solve issues of how to move the signals around the home so it opted for MoCA 1.1 and it also has an eSATA port for easy expansion of more disk. Operators will have to integrate this system with their own Conditional Access system, but this has already been done by a handful of the smaller US cable operators.
Pace followed up its announcement by saying that Buckeye Cablevision, Mediacom and Sunflower Broadband are already nearing completion of field trials for the HCS and that the National Cable Television Cooperative has agreed to offer the product to its vast membership of service providers.
Pace also alludes to ‘other’ cable operators in the US, and we assume this has attracted interest at Comcast and Time Warner Cable, where Pace already has a chunk of business.
Pace’s reckons its HCS box can distribute nine simultaneous HD streams throughout the home, which just means that its hard drive is that big and that fast. Subscribers will be able to record six HD programs at a time while maintaining full trick play mode (pause and rewind live TV), which is impressive. The HCS software also offers a folder system, a bulk delete tool, and the ability to bookmark playback to resume in another room.
We suspect that similar devices will come for outside the US, and to work with other systems like satellite and using other connectors such as HPNA and Wi-Fi, depending on what operators ask for.
Rovi’s Connected Platform software product is being used to allow cable operators to offer music, video, photos and Internet content, delivered using DLNA, UPnP and DTCP-IP-compliant devices via the home data network.
Pace’s HCS system is up for grabs now for US cable operators so could be in the field in under a year.