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Television Entertainment

Most DVR Owners Are Recording Live Sports, Survey Says (cnet.com) 137

Posted by msmash from the weird-habits dept.
A new survey by Thuurz Sports, a company that works with TV providers to increase the size of sports viewing audiences, finds that 84.1 percent of DVR owners record live sports, many of them as a "backup" for when they might miss the end (or the beginning) or the game, and a majority (58 percent) to skip the ads. From a report on CNET: "Over the past decade, DVR viewing has undermined certain elements of the TV business. Reacting to this threat, sports TV executives have rightly focused on the genre's relative strength, calling sports programming 'DVR-proof'," says Brian Ring, the consultant who created the survey for Thuuz, in the press release. "Sports are best viewed live, but this survey highlights the fact that most fans with DVRs regularly use. Most TV shows and movies these days are available on-demand from various sources, but live events, particularly sports, are considered among the most "DVR-proof" since there's more value in seeing the result live.
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Most DVR Owners Are Recording Live Sports, Survey Says More

Most DVR Owners Are Recording Live Sports, Survey Says

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  • My GF watches lots of TV live - reality TV and sometimes drama. If she watches it late, then the results have been spoiled on twitter/FB etc.

    • Re:not just live sports (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @03:07PM (#53426585)

      My GF watches lots of TV live - reality TV and sometimes drama

      I will almost never watch live, but I'll watch quasi-live. Assuming a show like The Walking Dead will have approximately 16 minutes of ads, I'll start playing the recording as the show is still recording. So I'll start watching 15-20 minutes after the show has started, skip the commercials throughout and I'll finish watching just as it finishes the broadcast.

      • I imagine your "quasi-live" watching is essentially what most sports fans do -- all those time-outs in the final few minutes of play really make some sports unwatchable -- skipping past them means action, not ads.
        • Exactly. I start watching NFL at (what is supposed to be) half-time. By skipping the ads and timeouts, I catch up to live in the last couple of minutes of the 4th quarter. Also, if I start watching it at half time, I'm well into my 'bubble' so nobody can spoil the game for me.

        • What are you talking about? Don't you like the tense fifteen minutes in which football is played after the two-minute warning?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      The idea that the final score (outcome) is knowable kind of ruins sports for me.

      It's especially true if the score gets so lopsided that a come-back is unlikely. If the score is 10 to 60, you figure that the rest is either boring, embarrassing, or both; and the urge to check the final score grows pretty strong.

      I almost think they should change the rules to favor the team that's behind to keep the score closer. "Socialized" sports? Worth a try. The main purpose of sports is entertainment anyhow: they are not

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dknj ( 441802 )

        I almost think they should change the rules to favor the team that's behind to keep the score closer. "Socialized" sports? Worth a try. The main purpose of sports is entertainment anyhow: they are not factories. Blowouts suck, with or without recording.

        Found the Carolina Panther's fan.

      • You are not alone. This week's TV broadcast of the Seattle vs Carolina NFL game got switched out for a "more competitive game" after Seattle was up by four touchdowns.

        I used to like watching Formula 1, until they switched to hybrid cars. Mercedes has totally dominated ever since, with Hamilton and Rosburg winning almost every race. Routinely we are shown "the race for 7th" because the leaders are so far ahead.

        My solution is to watch the game until the outcome is fairly certain, then simply do something e

      • I almost think they should change the rules to favor the team that's behind to keep the score closer. "Socialized" sports? Worth a try. The main purpose of sports is entertainment anyhow: they are not factories. Blowouts suck, with or without recording

        Preventing predictable blowouts is exactly what is behind many of the NFL's policies. Salary caps, player free agency, easier schedules for teams that did poorly the prior year, and better draft picks for teams that did poorly are all designed to make it harder for any team to dominate. The idea is that on "any given Sunday" anyone might win.

  • The survey between the commercials. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @02:49PM (#53426425)

    "Sports are best viewed live..."

    "...live events, particularly sports, are considered among the most "DVR-proof" since there's more value in seeing the result live."

    Oh really? What this survey actually highlights is just how much we all fucking hate commercials, no matter what is on TV.

    Here's hoping the bullshit valuation driving obscene commercial costs shrinks to where it should be.

    • Once the final score is known is there much point to watching? Isn't it like watching a murder mystery after someone tells you whodunnit?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        Score isn't everything. Sometimes there are especially good plays. Other times, the way in which the final score was reached plays a factor -- if there was a last-minute turnaround, for example.

        To me, the same rules apply as with spoilers for movies. Personally, I really don't care about spoilers. If the "surprise twist" sounds really dumb, I guess I'll save some money. If it sounds good, I'll see the movie even though I know how it will end, because there's more to the experience of watching it than just t

        • To me, the same rules apply as with spoilers for movies. Personally, I really don't care about spoilers. If the "surprise twist" sounds really dumb, I guess I'll save some money. If it sounds good, I'll see the movie even though I know how it will end, because there's more to the experience of watching it than just the summary.

          I find the worst for spoilers is previews. They usually show the best action scenes, and all of the "surprise twists" in the preview. I usually enjoy a movie more if my friends invite me along, and I've never heard of it before. For example I feel any surprise of "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" has been let out by the previews letting me know that that payphone is about to ring, and the cops will be the ones wearing the cuffs.

      • You don't have to start watching once the score is over. Game starts at 8, DVR starts recording at 8, you do other things for 45-60 minutes, then start watching. Fastforward through commercials. Calibrate your delay time as a function of sport.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        The trick is to time it so that you're just getting caught up to the real-time stream as the game ends. You know the result at about the same time as everyone else, and you don't have to sit through halftime, or commentary, or God Bless America in the seventh inning. (That one is a particular pet peeve of mine.)

        Another thing you can do is watch one event live and use the DVR to skim another during the commercials and commentary and dead time. Or, you can turn your attention from a game that looks like a for

      • Yes, but with a bit of practice, you can offset enough to skip most of the commercials and still end very close to the real ending.

        NFL games are probably the easiest. The broadcast is 3 hours. The actual game clock is 1 hour. Add a bit of buffer to deal with fast-forwarding commercials or going back to watch replays ... you can easily skip the first hour and change.

        I usually catch up to "live" with about 10-20 minutes left in the broadcast, so I can watch the finale unspoiled.

        • And most of the game clock is used up spent waiting for the quarterback to start things and moving people on/off the field. The last couple of minutes of each half when they get into clock (or time) management is especially painful.

          • There's actually only 12 minutes of genuine action during a 3-hour NFL broadcast.

            The other 2 hours and 48 minutes are commercials, the crowd, commercials, the cheerleaders, commercials, pre-snap preparations (OMAHA!) and more commercials.

            • Well, the players are actually humans. I played football in high school, and yeah, we relied on those timed-but-not-playing minutes to recuperate. It's not an endurance sport like soccer or basketball, it's a peak-performance sport like baseball or sprinting.

      • Once the final score is known is there much point to watching?

        If all you care about is the score then why are you bothering to watch at all? You have that argument backwards. I watch sports because I like seeing how things unfold. I like seeing the grace of movement, the tactics and strategy, the choices and mistakes, the effort and hustle, etc. That is FAR more interesting than the final score which is merely the summary of what happened. None of that is diminished in any way by knowing (or not) the ultimate outcome of the contest.

        Isn't it like watching a murder mystery after someone tells you whodunnit?

        Not at all. You can appreciate

    • Re:The survey between the commercials. (Score:4, Funny)

      by lalleglad ( 39849 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @03:18PM (#53426683)

      I agree with you, and coming from Europe I am usually amazed by the level of commercials on US TV channels, when I visit.
      Except for just being annoying with the interrupts, it must also be annoying to know that when they for example do show movies, between the commercials, then it has been cut to fit the time slots. So you can never expect to see a full movie on TV.
      This looks like greed that hasn't been controlled.

      I am sure your new president will change that, or will he? I mean, he is a TV man, isn't he? ;-)

      • it must also be annoying to know that when they for example do show movies, between the commercials, then it has been cut to fit the time slots. So you can never expect to see a full movie on TV.

        Longer movies aren't always better. Plenty of cases where the TV version cuts out the tedium and really improves the film over the original version (Pluto Nash comes to mind). Plenty of examples where the added material to the "Director's Cut" slows down and basically ruins a decent movie, rather than improving it

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Creepy ( 93888 )

        Most of Europe pays for a Television License [wikipedia.org] and/or Radio License for over the air broadcasts. That supposedly makes up for some of the advertising, but my friends in Germany say it is minimal. A guy I knew in Germany went on a rant a decade ago when he found out they were also taxing computers (more specifically monitors) because TV tuner cards could get around the fee, but that meant he went from paying for one TV to paying for five (and expensive - that'd be €200 to €1000 back then).

    • The NFL offers a service that allows you to watch a football game in about 45 minutes, rather than the three hours it takes when viewed live. 45 minutes is about the amount of time they're actually playing, the rest is between downs, mostly with the clock stopped.

      For the same reason, football is the show I MOST prefer to DVR. My old DVR had a "fast forward twelve seconds" button. I'd watch a play, then click the button to get to the next play. I could watch the whole game in under an hour, without missin

      • According to this Wall Street Journal [wsj.com] article there's about 11 minutes of action in a football game so it's even worse than you think.

      • 45 minutes is about the amount of time they're actually playing, the rest is between downs, mostly with the clock stopped.

        The actual amount of time spent actually playing a game of football is around 10 minutes per game. Somebody did a study about that a while back. The rest of it is just standing around and people shuffling back and forth. It's actually a really slow paced game where not much happens most of the time.

    • Here's hoping the bullshit valuation driving obscene commercial costs shrinks to where it should be.

      Let's hope not. If commercial costs drop, you can bet they'll have to shoehorn more in per hour - or the quality of shows will drop precipitously.

      • Here's hoping the bullshit valuation driving obscene commercial costs shrinks to where it should be.

        Let's hope not. If commercial costs drop, you can bet they'll have to shoehorn more in per hour - or the quality of shows will drop precipitously.

        Or, you know, maybe not pay obscene paychecks.

        Gets rather ridiculous when established A-list actors and actresses earn $10 - 15 million for working on a movie set for 12-24 months, while TV celebrities earn a million dollars per episode.

        • Here's hoping the bullshit valuation driving obscene commercial costs shrinks to where it should be.

          Let's hope not. If commercial costs drop, you can bet they'll have to shoehorn more in per hour - or the quality of shows will drop precipitously.

          Or, you know, maybe not pay obscene paychecks.

          Gets rather ridiculous when established A-list actors and actresses earn $10 - 15 million for working on a movie set for 12-24 months, while TV celebrities earn a million dollars per episode.

          Agreed, but if you think pay cuts would happen over more commercials or product placement, you're dreaming.

          • Here's hoping the bullshit valuation driving obscene commercial costs shrinks to where it should be.

            Let's hope not. If commercial costs drop, you can bet they'll have to shoehorn more in per hour - or the quality of shows will drop precipitously.

            Or, you know, maybe not pay obscene paychecks.

            Gets rather ridiculous when established A-list actors and actresses earn $10 - 15 million for working on a movie set for 12-24 months, while TV celebrities earn a million dollars per episode.

            Agreed, but if you think pay cuts would happen over more commercials or product placement, you're dreaming.

            This is true, but as more and more people use the FF button, retailers may soon find that commercials aren't worth it no matter the cost.

            Pay cuts are a result of cause and effect, and commercial revenue helps feed the insanity today. Product placement can help supplant that impact, but only up to a point. When the whole damn show starts to look like one big commercial, viewership may also wane.

    • I have an OTA antenna setup, and I do get live sports occasionally.

      I've found it to be much less of a time waster to record the first 45 minutes of a hockey game before I start watching it. I can skip the commercials and the intermissions and can watch a game in an hour instead of three and don't have to listen to the ads or some sports guys blabbing during intermissions.

      It just saves so much time.

  • I don't care if I know the outcome (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @02:54PM (#53426461)

    Most TV shows and movies these days are available on-demand from various sources, but live events, particularly sports, are considered among the most "DVR-proof" since there's more value in seeing the result live.

    I never quite understood this. I don't deny that it is true for many people but it doesn't make sense to me personally. Knowing the outcome in advance doesn't make an event more or less enjoyable for me. In fact in some cases it make it less pleasant if I actually care about the outcome. (I don't enjoy being nervous) I'd actually rather know in advance which are the good games worth watching most of the time. When I watch sports I watch to admire the beauty of the game. I'm interested in the techniques and tactics and strategies. Knowing the outcome just makes it like watching a movie like Titanic where I know the outcome but the interesting bit is how they got there.

    • "The point of a journey is not to arrive"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You are in the minority there. I *get* what you are saying but most people are the opposite. They don't really understand the game well enough to see "beauty" and evaluate the strategy and tactics (as primary reasons for watching) but are more or less enticed by the the process of seeing the outcome unfold. "Good Games" and generally graded, even by professionals, as games that are close (not blowouts) or games that are surprise upsets or games that the outcome changes from the first 3/4 to the end. Thi

      • Hardly anyone would enjoy gambling if you just put your $250 dollars in a hole and it said "you lost/won XYZ... if you would like to see how you got there, please proceed to play".

        There is a HUGE difference between watching someone else play and playing yourself. You are conflating the two. I get how knowing the outcome for an event you are participating in would ruin things. But why should I care whether or not I know the outcome of an event that I am a spectator for? It's fine if I don't know the outcome in advance but I get just as much enjoyment watching the game when I do know who won. And if I don't care how the game unfolded (whether or not I know the ultimate outcome) th

    • Yup. If knowing the outcome is what's important, then you only need to watch the last 5-10 seconds of the event; you can skip everything that comes before. Heck, you can skip watching it entirely and just catch the score on a sports news website.

      OTOH if the parts before the end of the game have entertainment value, then it doesn't matter if you know the outcome in advance, and there's no need to watch it live. The only benefit of watching it live is that it's easier to find other people who haven't se

    • I used to tape hockey games pretty religiously and then take the time to watch them sans commercials even if I knew the outcome. Just enjoyed watching an hour and twenty minutes (when you take out commercials and the in between period crap) of hockey for relaxation. If there was a team in Toronto where you could count on seeing a reasonably good game again, I'd probably start doing it again.

      I suspect that if you are a pretty die-hard fan of a sport (regardless of which sport) you'd do the same thing.

      The b

      • I used to tape hockey games pretty religiously. . . If there was a team in Toronto where you could count on seeing a reasonably good game again, I'd probably start doing it again.

        I call shenanigans! The last good pro team in Toronto was in 1967. VCRs weren't popular until at least the mid 1970s.

        • There were some good games in the '80s with Borje Salming, Tiger Williams, Mike Palmateer, Lanny McDonald, Rick Vaive.

          They never did well in the playoffs but in the regular season there were more than enough good games to watch from the VCR.

  • Yes, I do. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bfwebster ( 90513 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @02:54PM (#53426463) Homepage

    I DVR virtually any sports event I'm interested in. If I'm watching "live", it lets me pause the game for whatever reason, then skip over ads until I catch up again. If I'm not that invested in the game, or if I have other things interfering with seeing it live, I'll record it, see what the final score is, then decide whether I want to actually watch it. The upside is that I can skip thru ads.

  • DVR-proof? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The "DVR-proof" argument seems backwards to me. The biggest value in seeing the game live is that the window for watching it after the fact is severely limited at best, if it exists at all. Nobody plays World Series reruns. If I'm busy during the game and I don't DVR it, I can't watch it. Outside of network news coverage, it is the only thing on TV that I can't eventually catch later. It's like "Sports are best viewed live" is a command, not an observation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by j-beda ( 85386 )

      The "DVR-proof" argument seems backwards to me. The biggest value in seeing the game live is that the window for watching it after the fact is severely limited at best, if it exists at all. Nobody plays World Series reruns. If I'm busy during the game and I don't DVR it, I can't watch it. Outside of network news coverage, it is the only thing on TV that I can't eventually catch later. It's like "Sports are best viewed live" is a command, not an observation.

      Near the end of last season while visiting my father we watched some "Jays in 30" episodes on one of the sports chanels (Sportsnet?) he gets in Vancouver. They do a condensed commentary of the entire games - "Catch all the action in 30 minutes." Pretty enjoyable. Looks like it is available "on demand" from a few places:

      http://www.rogersondemand.com/... [rogersondemand.com]

      http://www.tvpassport.com/seri... [tvpassport.com]

  • ... is to be able to fast forward through "instant replay". So you can watch a football game in the same time it took in 1970, or a baseball game in 2000.

    • Red Sox and Yankees fans can start the DVR but wait to start viewing the game after about two hours. They can be caught up by game's end just by fast-forwarding through the trips to the mound those particular teams' catchers seem to make after pretty much every pitch.

  • It's families with kids (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They don't want to explain the issue with a four hour erection in the middle of a game. I'm in that boat.

  • I record every "live" show I intend to watch and start watching it late, sportsd or reality TV... doesn't matter. Because of all of the commercials and wasted time, I generally catch up to the live event just before the end of it anyway. Nothing spoiled, time gained. Takes me about 20 minutes to watch an entire 3 hour football broadcast without missing a single play (you can easily start after halftime). It takes maybe 30 minutes to watch a full baseball game. Sports are not remotely "DVR proof". No one ac

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      Sounds like a lame way to watch a game. You may as well just watch the highlights and box score.

      • Sounds like a lame way to watch a game. You may as well just watch the highlights and box score.

        Depending on the announcers for the sport, you really don't miss much if you fast forward through commercials and the repeated facts and
        anecdotes that really don't add any value to the game.

        Things like:

        You know, he's the second most famous alumni from some college you've never heard about. Toyota

        He's the thirteenth leading passer in the league on days divisible by two

        Last game of the year Brent, can't hold anything back now.

  • The problem with DVRs is if you keep pausing something live eventually you end up so far behind the feed the rest of the time you're just struggling to keep up with it. And you typically don't want to be caught watching a game that has already been decided. Then after the game you have to deal with the hundreds of shows saved on the drive that you feel so obligated to watch to the point where watching TV starts to feel like a chore. I haven't used a DVR in a couple years and don't miss it.

    • And you typically don't want to be caught watching a game that has already been decided

      Yeah, those sports police are real ball busters...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Xtifr ( 1323 )

      You want to be behind so you can skip the commercials!

      And you typically don't want to be caught watching a game that has already been decided.

      Oh no, the horror! Wait, what? I think most people don't want to know the final score till they've seen the game, but I've never met anyone who "didn't want to be caught" watching a completed game. What kind of bizarre personal insecurities cause that? Watching the game on delay has been popular since the VCR appeared, never mind the DVR. (And with the VCR, you had to wait till the game finished before you could start watching.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jetkust ( 596906 )
        Used to do it. No more. I always ended up having to attentively screw with the remote the hole time and ultimitely FF through the actual game. Also good job at interpreting the word "caught" as something that obviously has nothing to do with anything I'm saying. The main problem is social media. These days many people like to be on social media and comment on the game while it's ongoing. DVRing the game just screws that all up. I've never seen someone use a VCR to time slip the way they do with a DVR.

    • Psst. The trick to keeping up is to fast forward through the commercials...

      Of course I cut the cord years ago so know not of what I speak. Was doing really well without any TV, until Hulu came along with it's on-demand low-commercial offerings, and just as their increasing commercials made it easy to escape, I started dating someone with Netflix...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jetkust ( 596906 )
        Yea, DVRs are useless to me. All shows can be streamed, and if you use any type of social media, you likely want to watch games as live as possible. And I'm perfectly fine with missing part of a broadcast and occupying my time doing something else during the commercials.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          Sports is a good example of where legacy broadcasting rules effectively sabotage streaming. Even if you subscribe to some streaming service, blackout rules dating back to the 70s can still prevent you from having access to a game.

          Plus you can record in better quality yourself and you don't have to waste any bandwidth viewing a locally stored recording.

          Plus some of this stuff is completely free OTA. So it's gratis too.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by karnal ( 22275 )

            One of the groups that does a good job on this is Motogp.com - you can purchase a season subscription, about $100 USD and you get access to all races and footage past and present - and NO commercials.

            I was originally watching it on FS1 and then this past season BEIN took over. I thought - well, if I'm going to pay $10 a month for BEIN on my cable plan, I may as well stream - and I'm glad I do, because with a sport like motorcycle racing, the commercial timeouts were not true race timeouts - and the local c

    • And you typically don't want to be caught watching a game that has already been decided.

      Especially since yelling at the players from your couch can't affect the outcome if it's already over. Or even if just the play has already happened. Or even if it hasn't.

  • Were they vcr proof? Because, since commercial skipping was stripped out, there is no difference with regard to how a dvr impacts advertising. There were actually even devices that could skip commercials with similar effect to what has been ripped out on a vcr recording but they were never common.

  • Wider availability, can't DVR anything, can't block ads, but most everyone will watch anyway. Boosh.

  • Delayed start, live end (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Aqualung812 ( 959532 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @03:08PM (#53426603)

    I've not had a DVR for a couple of years now, but when I did, I would take a rough guess to start anywhere from 30-90 minutes late on the broadcast of whatever sportsball or racing I was watching.

    The goal was to skip every commercial, yet still end up live for the last 30-10 minutes.

    No spoiled results, and very few commercials in the last bit. Worked great.

    I also did with with shows with big reveals and lots of live views, like The Walking Dead. Those are a predictable 10 minute delay to catch up to live by the last commercial break.

    • Yep. Back when I had roommates so I could justify the cost of cable, we'd watch some half hour show then watch the hour long show that started at the same time, then start the hour long show that came on afterwards. Much more enjoyable viewing.

  • There have been years where neither team in the Super Bowl interested either me or my wife and we recorded it to fast forward through the game to watch the commercials. Of course now days most of the commercials are released, or leak, on the internet well before the game.

  • DVR not subscriber based (Score:3)

    by k6mfw ( 1182893 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @03:17PM (#53426679)

    It seems all these DVRs require subscription and be tied to the internet. OK so I haven't surveyed the market, I don't subscribe to comcast DVR or Tivo as they all seem tied to the internet. My current DVR is the Panasonic DMR-E85H that functions just like the old school VHS but it has a harddrive, just press the button and it starts recording. It has a timer to set when I want to record (there's always some show or movie that plays during times when I'm at work or in bed). If I want to save it, then I can make a DVD. No, I don't pirate movies but I want to save them myself in case I want to watch again (and be able to use a different player), i.e. when TCM showed a bunch of Mamie Van Doren movies which they will never show again. However, it is NTSC analog and I have to set the cable box for specific channel.

    It seems the Panasonic DMR-E85H (and the 75) was only on the market for a couple years then yanked probably because MAFIAA considers piracy a bigger problem than climate change, frugal economy, and terrorism. But wait! Aussie Panasonic has the DMR-BWT460GN, oooooo, looks real nice too. It's just like the SD models but this has huge HDD and Bluray. AC power is 220, USB to save files to external HDD and there is a RJ45 LAN jack to connect to a broadband router and get on the internet. It lists HDD info as recordable contents include mp4 and MPEG2. This beast covers every country except North America!

    But then anything nowadays to record? Not often are old movies played on TV, outfits like TCM tend to show the same movies over and over (rare exceptions like the MVD movies). So is there anything worthwhile to record? For me I have no interest in football, Kardashians, etc. There is PBS, and on weekends CSPAN3 has interesting history programs. Late last night on CSPAN3 a program (I recorded it with my DMR-E85H) by Frank Capra made during WWII portrays Japan determined to rule the world through military conquest.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      There are several DVRs that record Over-The-Air television. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=n... [amazon.com] I had the MediaSonic HomeWorx (which sells for $29) that I used for a while. But in the end I just decided I didn't need a DVR.

  • I watch a couple of sporting events a week, almost exclusively via DVR. Why? I'm busy with a toddler, job, etc. I'm busy enough that I probably haven't seen the score yet, bit, even when I have, I often want to understand how (or watch awesome plays).

    So how do you monetize me? How about not stopping so regularly for such long ad breaks? Right now, my ad viewership in these recorded games is zero. I blow right by ads via a DVR. But, if it was a 30 second ad here or there, I'd just sit back and tolerat

  • It is just because no one wants to miss the next half-time wardrobe malfunction. That, and fans want to be able to replay scenes that get passed over due to the pace of the game, or fast-forward the ones that take forever for no reason.

    DVR time shifting doesn't have to be for the purpose of watching hours later. It may be just to shift a few minutes forwards or back.

  • Same credibility as a **IA-paid report (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DCFusor ( 1763438 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @03:26PM (#53426755) Homepage
    Really, this should be obvious. Outfit that sells stuff pays for a report that says they're being ripped off - likely inflated numbers - as a background to get legislation to tax DVR owners or whatever other skim they can easy-street or litigate from. "Look, we lose x-zillion bucks from every recorder". Sound familiar? Remember the "tax" on blank CD's and so forth, since "they can only be used to pirate"? This is how the big boys operate, we should have learned long ago.

  • I used to watch a fair bit of F1 but since it is a global series the times are all over the place. Generally it was OK and I would make a point of getting up early to see a race in Australia or somewhere but that gets harder as I get older so I've relied on my TiVo to record races and watch them when I'm awake. The trouble is, the sports news on the radio always blabs the outcome. I don't see why since anyone who cares will have watched or will want to watch on their DVR, and everyone else doesn't need to k

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Will never happen, there is an audience for the scores w/o the full game. If the networks don't provide it someone else will and they lose viewers for their news.

  • I don't have time to watch an entire NFL Football game which is usually around 4 hours, but have found that if I DVR the game, I can skip through the commercials, time between plays, half time, etc. and view every play in just over an hour.

    [4, 15 minute quarters = 60 minutes, + a few minutes for mistakes, replays of great plays, etc.]

  • DVRs are great for American football and baseball. Considering there is approximately 15 minutes of actual gametime/action in a 3-4 hour baseball or football game, that's a lot of time that you can get back. A football fan spends more time watching replays than the actual game. With a DVR, you can choose to watch the replays or skip 'em.

    'Real' football (ducks for cover), or Soccer, is more continuous, so it is more difficult to skip. It has around 60 minutes of gametime/action in a 2 hour broadcast, but
  • I don't watch any sports, and I certainly don't record any, either.
  • Football is miserable now because they skip out to a commercial every possible second they can. Touchdown -> Commercial -> Kickoff --> Commercial --> Start next drive. Forget it.

    TV shows are bad too. I've been ripping my favorite shows to MKV files, and the folder details show the the lengths. An older 30 minute show like family guy in season 1 is 22-24min. An episode of big bang theory season 9? Freakin 18-20 minutes! MacGyver season 1? 48 minutes. Agents of S.H.I.E.L
  • Here is an app idea for you. Viewers watching a sports event push a "Wow!" button whenever there is something interesting happening in the game. These are the "producers". A "consumer" records a number of sports events and the playback device (a PC) shows only the interesting parts. You can now watch a lot of games simultaneously! (And of course skipping the commercials. Remember Carl Sagan's Adnix?) /Jon

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