Washington — This is the coming-out party for cable’s multiroom DVR.
On the floor today at Cable Show ‘09 are demos from Motorola, Cisco and Macrovision showing the ability to access and manage DVR recordings from another set-top in the home.
And big MSOs are set to roll out multiroom DVRs this year, including Time Warner — which is working with both Moto and Cisco — Cox and Bright House. (See Time Warner, Cox To Launch Cisco Whole-Home DVR and Time Warner Cable Tags Motorola For Multiroom DVR.)
Cable is not only looking to counter the telcos — both Verizon FiOS TV and AT&T U-verse have hyped this — but also to provide a “sticky” feature that should help inhibit churn.
And it’s an enhanced service people will pay for.
According to Verizon, about 25% of FiOS TV are taking the Home Media DVR, which provides multiroom DVR featuresand access to PC-based photos and music on the TV. The multiroom DVR is $19.99 per month, $4 more than the regular HD DVR. (See FiOS TV: Data Points.)
Macrovision, for its part, is incorporating multiroom DVR in Passport Echo 3.5 and i-Guide A28, set to be available in Q4, which run on Moto’s DCX MoCA-enabled boxes (screen shot of Passport below).
