Candace Lombardi
Motorola has announced video-sharing technology designed to let digital video recorders from the company send recorded programming to Motorola phones.
This latest technology is part of the company's in-the-home media network, released earlier this week at the CTIA Wireless 2006 trade show and meant to enable multiple devices throughout a home to access a single Motorola DVR through set-top boxes.
Motorola already supplies the set-top boxes for several cable service providers throughout the US.
The DVR-to-Mobile service would be offered by cable providers through the Motorola set-top boxes using OCAP, the cable industry's standard interactive-service software.
The DVR will have a phone cradle. Once the mobile phone is placed in the cradle, owners use their DVR interface to copy content, including movies and television programmes, over to the phone. As of now, the Motorola Razr V3x is the only phone capable of receiving and displaying this content.
Consumers will also be able to access their DVR remotely from their Motorola phone by clicking on an icon that then brings them to their DVR interface. From there they would program their DVR as if they were at home. Content, however, can only be downloaded via the cradle.
"The technology feature for this is complete, but rights management issues are still being worked out with service providers," Motorola spokesman Paul Alfieri told CNET.co.uk's sister site News.com. "Customers can expect authorising the cell phones per household to be used with the service."
Alfieri predicts that while access to a single DVR will be given to multiple phones per household, an authorisation will be given per household to prevent illegal content sharing.
"While the in-the-home network should be available to customers by the end of this year, the DVR-to-Mobile technology will not become available until sometime in 2007," Alfieri said. There was no information available on whether the service will come to the UK and Europe.
Motorola is not alone in its effort to entice mobile phone users with broadcast content on their phones. SlingMedia released the SlingPlayer Mobile earlier this week, which lets consumers remotely watch live TV- and DVR-recorded content, as well as remotely program their Slingbox DVRs. The service works with any Microsoft Windows mobile phone.
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