Tivo/Replay et al

[littlebone]

I just read an article in the NY Times online on how Tivo users love their machines; how it completely changes how they watch TV. There were a few examples of ad skipping:

For some TiVo users, household expenses have actually decreased since they forked over the cash to buy the box and pay for the monthly subscription. {name omitted} of Sacramento, Calif., buys fewer toys for her 7-year-old son, ... than she did for his 17-year-old brother at that age because (he) never sees TV commercials.

he never starts a program until at least 10 minutes after the show actually begins. That way, he can stay just far enough behind to skip all the commercials. "We waited one hour before starting the Academy Awards. We watched two episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and then skipped all of the commercials during the Oscars.

I got to thinking of PBS pledge breaks. The head of PBS was recently interviewed on a radio program in San Francisco. She talked a little about pledge breaks and said she understood how much people hated them, but the public stations get much of their working captial from the breaks in regular programming. So, will Tivo / Replay allow folks to ignore the pleas for more money? And will that be the end of publicly funded TV?Feel free to drift beyond the topic and talk about time-shifting video recorders in general. Like anyone needed an invitation to topic drift.

[ibe98765]

My last two VCR's have had auto commercial detection and fast forward through them. It's great! I watch Jeopardy every evening in 18 minutes instead of 28. PBS breaks are some of the most annoying and banal begging in the world of TV. They need to find another way to raise money. But this technology is not just affecting PBS, it's affecting all commercial TV stations and they are getting worried as the technology becomes more pervasive. Consumers have control now (if they want it). Ads are being avoided on TV, on radio (by station switching), on the web, etc. So advertisers are trying to come up with new ways to promote their products. Direct product placements in shows and movies is in vogue now but I'm not convinced that this has the same effect on people that normal advertising does.

[nlinecomputers]

I've also heard that Tivo is being pressured to remove the ad skip features and that broadcasters are trying to come up with ways to transmit the programs in ways that will fool Tivo units into thinking that the commercial time is still part of the program or use DRM to prevent the Tivo or VCR from recording it at all.Even if that fails to prevent us from skipping ads the future of TV is about to change. While skipping ads sounds like a benefit now advertisers are going to realize that viewers are missing the ads and they will stop using them. Broadcast and even cable TV will loose the only real revenue source out there. Get ready to pay for programming on a show by show basis because that is where I think we'll be at in 10 years.

[Guest LilBambi]

Could be Nathan ... course, I have always been opposed to paying for commercial television ... they already get paid mucho bucks by advertisers ... and commercials have always been the way stations get their revenue.Now, the stations get paid twice ... by advertisers and then again by cable companies, or cable from the sky companies, for rebroadcasting their station's signal which includes the shows with the commercials in them! ... and the bottom line to consumers is ... it is like paying for commercial television, which really goes against the grain.

[nlinecomputers]

Could be Nathan ... course, I have always been opposed to paying for commercial television ... they already get paid mucho bucks by advertisers ... and commercials have always been the way stations get their revenue.Now, the stations get paid twice ... by advertisers and then again by cable companies, or cable from the sky companies, for rebroadcasting their station's signal which includes the shows with the commercials in them! ... and the bottom line to consumers is ... it is like paying for commercial television, which really goes against the grain.

I agree that they get paid twice but the bulk of the pay still comes from advertising. If we, as consumers, manage to block the ads then advertisers will not waste their money on a venture no one sees. Broadcast TVs days are numbered and cable is going to skyrocket. The future is going to be pay per view world.

[eksimba]

I use my TiVo all of the time, and it has definitely changed how I watch TV. I do skip commercials (although it's not really skipping, it's fast-forwarding) and the pledge breaks on PBS.Obviously, this will dramatically change how television programming is broadcast in the future. I think that there will be fewer "commercial breaks", and there will be more in-show product placement, split-screen broadcasting (like newscasts with tickers along the bottom), and advertising overlays. We're seeing that stuff already, and we're being "conditioned" to accept them, so it won't be an abrupt change but more of an evolution. I remember how mad I was when the end-credits of shows on TV were shoved into a small window while previews for other shows were shown, but now I almost accept it as a matter of course.I think selective recording and "time-shifting" are here to stay, but commercial advertising will change to a format that will be more integrated into the entertainment broadcast, so as to keep viewers from skipping past them. DRM? I think that will be a player, too, but not on a wide scale nor on the major networks. Probably more with premium cable channels. 10 years from now, however, who knows?

[Dave PCPitstop]

I use my TiVo all of the time, and it has definitely changed how I watch TV. I do skip commercials (although it's not really skipping, it's fast-forwarding) and the pledge breaks on PBS.

You haven't put in the 30 second skip option then. Switch to viewing live TV, then press Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on the TiVo remote. You should hear three bells from TiVo confirming the change. Now the "skip to mark" will go forward 30 seconds and the "skip back" will go back 10 seconds. You just can't imagine how TiVo changes your TV viewing habits. Now I don't really worry about what's on. When I have time to watch TV I go to TiVo and see what it has for me.

[littlebone]

I know that the company that bought ReplayTV did so only when broadcasters dropped a threatened law suit. The reason they decided not to sue? The company that bought Replay agreed that they would not add the automatic commercial skipping to the next generation of the product. For a few months buy.com kept pushing the old ones by touting the feature that the next version wouldn't have.

[eksimba]

You haven't put in the 30 second skip option then. Switch to viewing live TV, then press Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on the TiVo remote. You should hear three bells from TiVo confirming the change. Now the "skip to mark" will go forward 30 seconds and the "skip back" will go back 10 seconds.

I had done that back when we first got it, and we used it sometimes, but it didn't always work well because not all commercials are 30 seconds... We found it was easier to triple-speed fast-forward until we see the show coming back on and then press play. It's faster for us than backtracking when the 30-second skip went too far...Also, my children watch select shows on PBS, Disney, Nickelodeon, etc. (another great reason to have a TiVo). Those half-hour shows actually have 20 straight minutes of entertainment programming followed by 10 minutes of promotional programming. When the 20 minutes are up, one button press jumps to the end of the program, skipping all of the promos. Enabling the 30-second skip disables the skip-to-the-end function we use so often.But, back on topic, these types of 'habits' are exactly how PVRs like TiVo and the rest affect how we watch television. My two young sons don't know that there was ever an alternative to on-demand, pausable, commercial free television programming. I get to choose what they see (at least for now) because I set up the recording schedule. Combine that with all of the DVD movies they can pull off the shelf, and I don't know if they are privileged or merely spoiled...