Time / place shifting has taken on a whole new meaning with the recent announcement that Motorola will produce a digital video recorder (DVR) enabled set-top-box that will feature a smartphone cradle for direct download of TV content into your mobile phone.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
of Projection Monthly &
Microdisplay Report

The first generation in Motorola’s "In-the-Home Media Network" is the new Motorola DCT3080. This is a standard-definition (SD), dual-tuner with hard disk drive (HDD) that can act as a hub for a media network - moving content such as recorded shows, photos, or music to other devices in the home. Gen 2 offers the promise of linking the content directly to high-end smartphone devices with storage card capacity, like the Motorola Razr V3, the only Motorola phone capable of receiving and displaying this content today.

Motorola said the DVR-STB will have a phone cradle (either built-in or as an accessory) and once the mobile phone is connected, a standard user interface allows access to the DVR content including all the goodies mentioned above.

One other cool feature announced by Motorola is the ability to remotely access the DVR from the phone. This would be used primarily for programming as content can only be downloaded via a hard wire connection.

But the fun doesn’t stop with the mobile device. Motorola sees this as just one in a plethora of devices the media network hub can distribute content to. Think of it as CE’s answer to the media center PC, without Windows, (sorry Bill) and all the legacy baggage that comes with the IT network side of a media home distribution topology.

But it will create some headaches too. For example, to distribute the signal to other remote displays, say the LCD-TV in the kitchen or a bedroom, you need a coax connection back to the DVR hub plus a slave STB device from Motorola, the DCC 100 (short for Digital Cable Client). What is conspicuously absent from the mix is a network PC, server or any other hint of technology from the IT camp.

While Motorola said the technology is ready, and indeed they had live demos at the CTIA show-the one hold-up is, you guessed it-the dreaded DRM (short for digital rights management). The same culprit said to be holding up deployment of Blu-ray HD players / recorders. Well-no surprises here. Suffice it to say that Motorola "expects" a single DVR will be given access to multiple phones per household. We’ll have to wait and see how all this plays out. The company expects the phone to DVR service to begin sometime in 2007.

As for our take, we see this as yet another example of creative ways to empower mobile video beyond the real-time wireless feed. So Qualcomm Media FLO and other wireless video services, take note. You are not the only game in town and mobile content will bifurcate into time-sensitive and time shifted categories with the former justifying network premiums but perhaps not the latter. -SS