With the Samsung purchase of Boxee, the Cloud DVR feature will become a thing of the past. According to the company, "Cloud DVR functionality we provided to certain Boxee TV users will be discontinued on July 10th". Sad news for current Boxee owners that have saved content on their cloud DVR. But it also got me thinking, if we don't physically own digital content, but save it in the cloud, then we don't really own it.
Some might say that the DVR is a rental type service and we don't control it, but I think that you can still take the concept to the next level. To truly own digital content, we must maintain our own physical storage for it; if we choose to keep it purely in the cloud, then should that company business go away, just like Boxee, we could lose our ownership of it.
But back to Boxee, I must say I am surprised to read that Samsung doesn't want to keep the cloud DVR business alive and well. For consumers seeking a TV Everywhere approach with their DVR content, the cloud provides it and more. While Samsung might want to support the hardware DVR approach, there should seem no problem to offer the cloud as a software complement service.
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