Brought to you by Primus - a smart choice for your Internet and Home Phone services.
Are you shopping for a new TV plan and seeing the term “cloud PVR” everywhere? Here’s what it is, how it works, and why it’s pretty great.
Firstly, What Is PVR?
PVR is a personal video recorder. They’ve been out for more than a decade. Usually called a local PVR, they’re basically a box that lives on your TV set. They can save a set number of hours of TV, so you can save shows as you watch them or set it up to save shows and watch them at a later time. PVRs can also let you pause or rewind live television, letting you fast-forward through commercials or pause so you’re not limited to commercials for bio breaks.
Okay, So What Is Cloud PVR?
A cloud PVR can do everything a local PVR can, but instead of your content living in a box by your TV, it lives in the cloud. That is, it lives in your provider’s network, and you access it via your internet connection.
What Does the Cloud Bring to the Table?
Cloud PVR’s coolest feature is that you can increase your storage with a phone call. Say your provider starts you off with 50 GB of storage when you get your cloud PVR from them, but you like storing TV so much that you need more. With a phone call, you can increase that number to 150 GB or even 200 GB.
Obviously, you can’t do that with a local PVR. You’d need to buy a new physical unit. But because your content lives in the cloud, it’s easy to increase your storage size.
And This Is Just for My TV?
Nope. Like most households, you’re probably watching TV on your tablet or phone in addition to the actual TV in your living room. A cloud PVR lets you watch stored or live TV on those other devices. On top of that, if you want to watch something on your actual TV that’s stored on your phone, you can do that via an app that links up with your cloud PVR.
Should I Get Cloud PVR?
If you’re watching live TV, yes. You get a lot of the benefits of streaming, such as watching things on your own schedule, pausing when you want, and skipping ads, but for live TV. You also can easily manage your storage with a few clicks and increase or decrease the amount of storage you’re paying for with a phone call. It just makes your TV experience that much better.
