Telefonica, the largest phone company in Spain, is planning to debut a network DVR service in November. Called “Past TV”, the service will offer programs from the previous week on-demand. The shows will include commercials, but unlike similar services in the US, viewers will be able to fast forward through them.
Cablevision of course has tried to introduce network DVR service in the states, but has continually been rebuffed. Time Warner has come a little closer with “Start Over” and “Look Back”, but neither of these offerings allows fast forwarding, and the time window for viewing programs is much shorter than Telefonica is promising.
More bad news for those of us stateside, the video service comes as part of a triple-play bundle with 10-Mbps data rates.
It doesn’t sound like a network DVR, more like a super VOD service.
The network DVR worked like a real DVR – you told it what to record – only the storage was centralized. And the article you link only says it will make available ‘broadcasts from the previous week’ – not *all* content. So this could be just primetime shows, etc.
Note that they will *also* be offering a standard DVR – which indicates that this service is *not* a network DVR service or there would be no reason to offer that.