The dark cloud hanging over the annual cable industry show sponsored by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association has taken the form of possible legal action over Cablevision's recently announced plan for hosted digitial video recorder servcies. No official word has come down, but programmers everywhere are looking into the legality of the service.

Time Warner tried a similar program back in 2003, but eventually folded to the pressure from programmers. If the plan goes forward, and proves successful, we're going to see similar services rolled out by all of the cable companies, and maybe even the death of TiVo unless it can find a way to market its software to the cable companies. More importantly, if the percentage of viewers using DVRs explodes we may start seeing a slew of comercials edited for DVR viewing. — Brian Ward

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