Architecture of a PVR appliance with 'long-tail' Internet-TV capabilities

The design and implementation of a networked PVR appliance incorporating support for Internet-TV is described. The appliance incorporates support for the bittorrent protocol and employs user tools for content location, management and scheduling which encourage background downloading of content and it is particularly suited for "long-tail" content distribution applications. The standard bittorrent algorithm has been modified to allow client bandwidth and content storage to be managed from a central content server. With this modified protocol each PVR can function as a combined broadcast and storage node in an Internet-wide distribution system.