Home Networks and the DVR Evolution
May
19
Written by:
Jeremy Glowacki
5/19/2010 2:54 AM
Keeping pace with the progress of consumer electronics often makes you feel like you’re running a marathon race at a sprinter's pace. Sometimes it helps to pull off to the side of the road, metaphorically speaking, to catch your breath and review the landscape behind you and assess the road ahead.
A new white paper by Entropic Communications VP of technology Dr. Anton Monk takes that sort of approach in that way that it describes the evolution of video recorders and their interaction with home networks.
Entropic is a San Diego-based fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops, and markets systems solutions to enable connected home entertainment. The paper is not without a bias, of course, as Monk makes the case for the technology developed by the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (Entropic’s “horse” in this particular race.) Behind the MoCA bias, however, the paper still makes for an interesting read.
The author describes how a majority of service providers are deploying multi-room DVR solutions, with some embracing the remote storage DVR (RS-DVR) as an alternative and others electing to deploy a hybrid solution at some point.
Regardless of the presence of mDVR or RS-DVR, Monk writes, it is hard to imagine a future without some sort of high-speed, robust home entertainment IP network. Future RS-DVR is likely to be delivered over an IP access network, he said. However, even with the currently proposed broadcast-based RS-DVR as a solution, consumers will expect to move personal and Over-the-Top (OTT) content around the home and have IP connectivity to other devices (such as gaming consoles) by the television.
Whatever the service provider ultimately deploys for multi-room DVR functionality, a robust, high-speed, reliable and easy to install entertainment network in the home is crucial, he said.
Learn more about the architectures that are commonly considered for storing and replaying video content, compare the strengths and weaknesses of each, and learn about the changing requirements for a high-speed home entertainment network after downloading a PDF copy of the paper: DVR Evolution.pdf