What You Need to Know About Cloud DVR

If you’re at all thinking of rolling out a Cloud DVR service you need to listen to Light Reading’s recent webinar “Sunny Skies for Cloud DVR?”. Our CTO John Carlucci is one of several industry luminaries who examine the benefits and challenges of implementing a Cloud DVR service.

Even if you’re not already thinking about Cloud DVR, you really owe it to yourself to still listen to the webinar to understand its potential to reduce subscriber churn, trim capital costs and deliver a more personalized TV Everywhere viewing experience.

Some highlights include:

•       You don’t have to millions of subscribers to be successful.  An economically viable Cloud DVR service can have as few as 50,000 subs.
•       Unlike STB-based DVRs, which can only simultaneously record as many programs as they have tuners, there’s essentially no limit to how many simultaneous programs Cloud DVR can record.
•       Cloud DVR reduces subscriber churn – Telefonica has seen substantial reductions in churn which is attributed to their popular Cloud DVR service.
•        Providing content from the Cloud allows operators to take advantage of IP content delivery to HDMI dongles and other emerging CPE that are smaller, portable and which consume less power.
•       Local ad insertion doesn’t have to be affected by a Cloud DVR service, ensuring that this important revenue stream is maintained.
•       Cloud DVR can provide a personal vault for User Generated Content (UGC). As users increase the content they want to keep in the cloud, operator can add a new revenue stream by selling additional storage space.

The largest operators are setting the pace with Cloud DVR offerings while breaking ground by improving efficiencies, establishing best practices and driving down the costs. 

Cloud DVR is a future proof method for expanding viewer services. Planning for spinning up this service should be on the horizon for any operator that serves up content.