Electronic News reports that ABI Research, a market research firm, issued a report stating that network-based personal video recording (nPVR) will "radically change" everything from advertising to content distribution on video networks fueling the DVR market which is estimated to grow from 20 million current subscribers last year to over 250 million in 2011.

"nPVR offers substantial benefits to service providers in terms of cost," principal analyst Michael Arden said in a statement. "But nPVR has to prove that its technology is as good as client-side DVR boxes, and it raises serious issues with some content providers, issues that they are willing to take to court."

ABI believes the question in coming years is how much of the function of recording storage will shift to an operator's network.  The nPVR allows any digital set-top box (STB) to act as a DVR through software upgrades without needing a hard drive for storage since content is stored on a server in the network.

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