YouTube’s February 28, 2017 TV announcement put two different limits beside each other: no ceiling on cloud DVR storage, but nine months of retention for each recording. DVR means digital video recorder. In this proposed service, the recording would be kept in the cloud rather than saved as a video file occupying space on the viewer’s phone. [youtube]
Capacity answers how much can be recorded; retention answers how long a recording remains. YouTube said its cloud DVR could record multiple shows simultaneously without consuming the phone’s storage or data for that recording operation. That wording should not be extended to playback. The announcement did not establish that watching a recording would use no data, or that viewers could build a permanent offline collection. [youtube]
Playback was described separately. YouTube listed phones, tablets and computers, alongside television viewing through Chromecast or Chromecast built in. Variety reported that the mobile interface would have a library containing DVR recordings and video-on-demand content. A library screen therefore was not itself proof that everything displayed there was a locally saved recording; the report identified two kinds of content within it. [youtube][variety]
A useful way to read the proposal is to ask three questions in order: where is the program recorded, when does that recording expire, and on what screen will it be watched? The answers described a service design, not a performance test. Variety reported no specific launch dates. The February announcement supplied a model for understanding the DVR, but not evidence that a reader could already use it. [youtube][variety]
Source documents
- Finally, live TV made for youhttps://blog.youtube/news-and-events/finally-live-tv-made-for-you/
- YouTube TV: $35 Per Month With 40 Channels, Unlimited DVRhttps://variety.com/2017/digital/news/youtube-tv-bundle-pricing-1201998917/