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With the announcement by Cablevision earlier this week that they will begin testing their Remote Storage DVR System (RS-DVR), both Comcast and Time Warner have come out in support of Cablevision and their RS-DVR System. At the Bank of America Media, Telecommunications and Entertainment Conference Comcast COO Stephen Burke said: “It’s a great idea. I applaud it.” Burke, along with Time Warner CFO John Martin, said at the conference that the Cable industry is watching Cablevision and that if their tests are successful that they would most likely implement a similar solution.

It seems like the rest of the Cable industry is watching Cablevision to see if they get sued by the broadcast networks. Time Warner had toyed with the idea of implementing a similar service a couple of years back (called Maestro) but abandoned the service amid fears of copyright lawsuits from the TV networks. The difference with Cablevision’s RS-DVR system is that users will select which shows to record and each will have their on storage, initially limited to 80 hours. The Time Warner Maestro system was going to record all TV shows and store them so that users could choose to watch any show they wanted to without having to have scheduled it to record.

If Cablevision’s RS-DVR system works and they are not sued by the broadcast networks, I think that the rest of the Cable companies will probably follow suit and put into place their own Remote Storage DVR solution. So what will this mean for the Comcast / TiVo deal and any future deals that TiVo may be working on with the other Cable companies? If Comcast does go ahead with an RS-DVR system, why would they also offer TiVo boxes — although they could probably offer the TiVo boxes as a “premium” solution, I don’t see many people opting for it. The RS-DVR choice would be cheaper and most people just don’t know how much better a TiVo is compared to your average generic DVR or PVR, which is what the RS-DVR systems will probably be like.

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