Strange things afoot at Cablevision. They're apparently working on a DVR without a hard drive—the content is stored remotely on Cablevision servers and then pulled down when needed. Customers "record" by pressing a button, ensuring that the cable company's server's don't get bogged down by simply recording everything that goes over the customer's tuner.

The new service, called RS-DVR, will launch in Long Island, NY and then possibly spread to other areas. There is no major hardware upgrade needed, although existing cable boxes will need a small firmware upgrade.

While I'm all for off-loading the storage burden to folks who might have some money for a few terabytes of storage per user, I'm wondering about privacy and fair use implications.

Cablevision to test network DVR [News.com.com.com]

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