After a weekend’s worth of analysis of the fallout from TiVo’s landmark victory over EchoStar, the telecommunications industry seems certain of a couple of things: TiVo will either file many more lawsuits or it will negotiate quite a few settlements, or some combination of the two.

Many expect TiVo to either sue or settle with Cisco Systems, which is in the process of acquiring set-top box manufacturer Scientific-Atlanta, and Motorola, the leading set-top box provider in the United States.

Both sell products that give viewers the ability to pause, rewind, or fast-forward live TV programs—the technology at the center of TiVo’s successful lawsuit. TiVo was awarded $73.9 million by a jury in a federal district court in Marshall, Texas (see TiVo Records $73M Patent Win).

Neither Cisco nor Motorola responded to calls for comment by press time.

Cable operators could follow in the path of DirecTV, which last week agreed to continue offering TiVo service for three more years. The deal postpones any litigation between TiVo and the largest satellite TV operator in the U.S. for at least the duration of the agreement.

Shares of TiVo rose $1.14 to $9.19 in recent trading.

DirecTV markets its own DVR, but for the duration of the TiVo deal, DirecTV customers have the option of using either TiVo or DirecTV’s generic DVR.

Comcast, the largest cable operator, is expected to begin offering the TiVo box along with other DVR options later this year.

Neither DirecTV nor Comcast would comment for the record.

Murky Picture

From there it gets kind of murky. Three weeks ago, Cablevision, the sixth-largest cable operator in the U.S., said it was testing digital video recorder technology as a service rather than as a box that sits next to its subscribers’ TV sets (see Cablevision Disconnects DVR).

DVR technology typically allows cable and satellite service subscribers to store programs on hardware devices that are usually incorporated into the set-top boxes in their homes.

But Cablevision will offer its 2 million digital cable subscribers the option of storing the programs in Cablevision’s facilities at the point where the TV signal originates.

The option, which the Bethpage, New York-based cable operator is calling remote-access digital video recorder service (RS-DVR), will allow customers with traditional set-top boxes to get all of the benefits of hardware DVRs without the additional monthly expense of an upgraded box.

The company currently charges $9.95 for a DVR-enabled set-top box. Cablevision expects the RS-DVR option to be less expensive to its subscribers and allow customers to avoid the need to sit at home waiting for an installer to arrive.

Calls to Cablevision were not returned by press time.

ReplayTV Replay

There is also the possibility of legal challenges coming from other DVR providers such as ReplayTV. The Santa Clara, California-based company, formed in 1997, was one of the innovators of DVR technology, along with TiVo (see ReplayTV Switches to Software).

The company’s technology also allowed users to pause, rewind, and replay live TV by saving the TV images to hard drives—the very technology that is the subject of TiVo’s lawsuits.

But ReplayTV lost the duel with TiVo. The company was purchased in 2001 by SONICblue, which filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The Japanese conglomerate D&M Holdings bought ReplayTV in April 2003. D&M Holdings did not return calls by press time.