What I want more than what you describe is the ability for me to stream a "missed" recording from someone else's DVR in the middle of the night to my DVR when it is idle. Or download anything that is on someone else's DVR via a peer to peer content sharing network.
I use DIRECTV's HD DVR service. They all are also capable of "On Demand" video download. But the On Demand content is very limited. In theory, every DVR from DIRECTV or Cablevison or whatever should be all indexed and connected to a central or distributed database, where any customer can find a "missed" or already recorded program on someone else's machine or groups of machines and download that program to their DVR. Not unlike the way Bittorrent works. The problem is not technical, but licensing and rebroadcast rights and all that stuff. NBC in Los Angeles probably doesnt want people in New York viewing pre-recorded primetime material because it has localized commercials and stuff. And some programs such as sporting events are only be licensed to air for a very limited time, they will need expiration windows for the material if it is shareable. They'll also have to figure out how to have generic content feeds (like what you get in a network downlink at a local affiliate before you broadcast) that are cached and how to inject localized advertisements on the fly. Doable, but not that easy to figure out from a legal point of view.
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