Watching Ippv Events; Ippv System Architecture - TiVo T6 Product Support Handbook

Watching iPPV events

When planning for and watching iPPV events, the following features complement your experience:
Extend recording time—Many live events last longer than planned. You can pad the

recording time on the beginning, the ending, or both, to make sure you don't miss
something important.
Rent blocks of time—In addition to renting a specific iPPV event, your TiVo device can be

set up so that you can rent blocks of time for an hourly charge. This is useful when you
plan to watch several shows in succession.
To Do List—Displays scheduled iPPV events. Red flags or exclamation points indicate
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upcoming expiration dates.
Recording History—Displays the iPPV recordings that you scheduled and that were
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deleted, expired, watched, or canceled.

iPPV system architecture

iPPV provides timely reserving and recording directly from the set-top box. The architecture is an
automation of Reservation Pay Per View (RPPV), in which a set of requests are sent to a PPV proxy
server provided by the MSO. The PPV server then asks the billing system to authorize the iPPV event.
The TiVo devices use the data network connectivity to connect with the PPV server instead of the
legacy out-of-band path.
Warning: Because TiVo uses the RPPV architecture, the MSO must configure all TiVo iPPV
events as RPPV events. Otherwise, the iPPV features on the device do not work.
The CableCARD is a one-way mechanism, and the event metadata uses a proprietary interface and
path to the Cisco or Motorola headend. Therefore, the TiVo architecture provides another mechanism
to allow an iPPV quick purchase, without using the CableCARD proprietary interface for the
preliminary steps of a transaction.
This architecture currently relies on the PPV server and CableCo's ability to associate a TiVo Service
Number (TSN) and a CableCARD identifier with a subscriber account for authorization purposes. The
APIs to query PPV metadata and send the purchase requests are based on the TSNs. This model only
supports leased DVRs, where the MSO is aware of the DVR-to-CableCARD address relationship.
Figure 18–6 shows the high-level system architecture for the iPPV feature.
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Watching iPPV events

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