Jordan O'BrienBush, the Argos-owned brand, is doing the unimaginable – launching a product before anyone else in the UK. That’s because the electronics manufacturer is gearing up to launch the first ever cloud DVR on these shores powered by ShowDrive – allowing users to record a TV show on their set-top box and enjoy that content from anywhere in the world, directly from the cloud.
The Bush Digital TV Recorder is not particularly special – and it’s not something the average custom installer will go near – but its integration with ShowDrive is what makes it really stand out. ShowDrive is a new monthly subscription service that allows users to remotely store their recordings on the cloud and access them from anywhere in the world.
Like other media servers, such as Plex and Kodi, ShowDrive allows users to not only watch their TV shows and movies, but also enjoy them with a visually rich UI. That means ShowDrive serves up metadata information such as the name of the episode, reviews and artwork. The software also works with on demand services, recommending related content or episodes that have not yet aired on TV but are now available for online streaming.
A monthly subscription to ShowDrive can cost as little as £1.99 for users needing just 35 hours of storage or as much as £5.99 a month for 350 hours of storage. What this gives you is the ability to store either HD or SD video that can be accessed on a smartphone, tablet, PC or a set-top box supported by the software. Using cloud storage, ShowDrive is also able to keep TV recordings safe – meaning if there’s a catastrophic failure with the set-top box, all is not lost.
ShowDrive is a service from Internet start-up Simple.tv. While it’s a company not that well known in the UK, in the US the company offers a private TV service for recording and viewing live TV from anywhere in the world. It’s also designed to bridge the gap between traditional TV and on demand content – offering users pretty much everything they want to watch on one box.
While ShowDrive is the interesting addition to the Bush Digital TV Recorder, the Argos-owned brand has also packed its DVR with two tuners and 16GB of internal storage. Internal storage won’t be all that important though – as ShowDrive will be storing all the content.
Bush may be the first brand with a cloud-connected DVR – but it won’t be the last. ShowDrive has already stated that further support is set to come later this year, from both TV manufacturers themselves and set-top box makers.