Cisco Systems has agreed to pay $92 million dollars to purchase Arroyo Video Solutions, a company that provides video-on-demand services for Comcast and Time Warner.
Cablevision had tapped Arroyo to develop a trial remote-storage PVR system. Cablevision executives think network PVRs could be the wave of the future, theorizing that it could be cheaper to record and store video remotely than to put a set-top PVR in every customer's home. But the trial program has been on hold since June, until a lawsuit is resolved.
Television networks and movie studios allege that the remote storage PVR could violate copyright laws. Of course, they said the same thing when set-top PVRs first hit the shelves in the late 90s.
Anyway, it looks like Cisco is hoping to use Arroyo's expertise in video-on-demand to roll out other interactive cable services. So if the lawsuit is resolved, it looks like those network PVRs could still be on the horizon. Whether anyone actually wants to store and record their video remotely is another question.
