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Jumping to DVR Conclusions
by Andrew McCaskey
Look at your DVR Mix: Where are the Real Tivos ?
The NYTimes is reporting on yet another lesson for content providers to learn and then immediately forget: ‘Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer.
The lean-back experience is, apparently still passive entertainment. Too lazy to skip the commercials. Not so fast, I think you have a change in the baseline – which DVR is being used to skip the commercials.
According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year.’ The article also notes viewership increases ‘in the range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent when DVR ratings are added. The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.”
I’d submit that jumping to conclusions may not be the first step. All I know is that the Tivo (Models 1 and 2) that we had for a number of years were far easier to control and a lot better in chopping those commercials out. When we shifted to an HD plasma and added the DirectTV HD-DVR, it became painfully obvious that there was some serious collusion between the content providers and Direct-TV. In addition to a hard to handle interface, the firmware itself seems to make it very difficult to skim through material, trim the commercials or jump to the start or end of the file. The TIVO model 3 was not an option, being incompatible with the DirectTV satellite delivery system – and accepting only Cablecard.
DirectTV claims that they will be offering a real TIVO HD in 2010. Until that time, don’t blame it all on TV viewers- unless they have an option for less than crappy HD-DVR.
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