Why don't they have this? - opportunity to innovate

[BlackVelvet]

You know how you can save stuff online these days, be it DropBox or Google cloud or whatever else you use. They give you ridiculous amounts of space for free which you can then go on to top up at a cost. I don't know what percentage of that you use up but I am guessing for most people who use it just to back up their every day files, if that, the use is close to nothing.

Now on the other hand you have digital TV. We now have the opportunity not just to pause, rewind and fast forward, we can record sitcoms, movies and match of the day. The memory is limited so you're always forced to delete things which sometimes you really don't even want to just make more space.

So my question is, why not use one to serve the other? Why not give us the ability to connect our digital TV memories to the clouds?

Is there something already out there which I have yet to come across? I know Windows Media Centre, allow people to record TV on their laptops but I'm talking about the other way around, set Match of the day to record every weekend and save it online without having to bother with hard copies and DVDs

[Arabman]

They won't allow it to save to clouds, because you might distribute it, burn it to DVDs to sell it or freely give it to your friends/relatives (who have no subscription TV), or profit from it one way or another (like regularly sending recorded contents to Somalia). What you can record on DVRs or laptops is for personal use. Many or most of the contents you record are *DRM'ed, meaning it can only be viewed on a particular DVR/laptop, under a particular account, limited time, etc. Under commercial operating systems (Windows, MAC), there isn't software that converts recorded contents into file formats that can be viewed on other machines (laptops, smart TVs, DVD players, etc), without an account, for unlimited time, etc. However, under open source operating system like Linux, you can do that. Even if you go over the hurdle of converting the contents you want and storing it on clouds, there's the NSA surveillance, movie/music corporations and other entities who collaborate with the clouds to scan for the files you stored there. If they find contents not meant to be stored there, you're gonna get sued, arrested, fined or all. Are you familiar with Megaupload and its founder whose company was shutdown and arrested by the US Department of Justice?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

[BlackVelvet]

Yes I do remember that story.

I understand there may be a lot of complications but what I am suggesting is not a random 3rd party. I don't know where you live but I'll assume you have Virgin TV if not Sky. What I am asking is why can't a cable provider provide a way for its customers to save recorded TV online if they're not able to increase the storage allowance? It would be like NetFlix as opposed to MegaUpload, the content is already paid for and is only available to the one Virgin TV account (to be viewed at a later date on that same TV or on a laptop which logs in to the account). We already pay for the service, the hundreds of channels of which you can never watch and record more than 2 or 3 at a time. There's so much variety and yet very little you can do with it.