Link: A Variation on the DVR, Without Ad Skipping
"’We have a particular sensitivity to the needs of business in every stage in the value chain, because we’re part of a diversified media company,’ Mr. Stern of Time Warner Cable said."
This fascinating new-economy corollary to "the customer is always right" must make Time Warner Cable subscribers feel pretty warm and fuzzy.
Has any customer in the history of DVR technology ever stepped up and said "you know, this DVR thing is terrific, but what I’d really prefer is to lose the ability to skip commercials so that I can satisfy the needs of businesses in every stage of the value chain?" Customers who aren’t on crack, I mean.
Early in my history as a participant in the corporate value chain I decided that the cable companies would never get a nickel of my money. Every so often, something like this comes along to validate that rule.
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Perhaps capitalism will finally triumph once the customers ARE on crack.
-danny
Weird story. We’ve been paying for Time Warner’s DVR service in Brooklyn for at least three years now, merrily skipping over commericials. Well, except for the Colbert Report (and a few others) that consistently forces us to watch at least some of the commercials – notably one for a booze company – red background/text of a quote …?
Anyhow … NYT story did quite tell me if I’ll still be allowed to skip commercials if I keep paying.
Oh, and now I do recall precisely when we got the DVR. It was a short time after the big Northeast blackout. That afternoon I *almost* took our old cable box into TW to replace it for the big DVR. Luckily I didn’t, because I got stuck in the subway for two hrs and had to walk out the tunnel and climb up onto the subway platform – in a dress and sandals mind you. Carrying a DVR box wouldn’t have been an option
They made you physically take the old cable box back into their office so you could get a new one? Jesus, that’s reason #4,583 not to use a cable company. (Our Tivo was delivered to our home by a smiling young gentleman in a brown uniform.)
I’m puzzled as to why anyone would choose a “free” DVR that doesn’t work as well as Tivo when Tivos really aren’t that expensive. Over its three-year lifespan I expect that our Tivo is going to cost us something like $0.25 a day, and we use it seven days a week, so it’s a tremendous value. I’d go crazy if I had to downgrade to something that didn’t let me offload programs onto my computer or let me listen to MP3s from my computer when we run out of TV to watch in the evening.
Naw, they just gave me the option of bringing in the box if I wanted it faster. I think I would have had to wait a week or so if I wanted the tech to bring it out.
And yeah, I know, tivo’s way better than what we have with TW’s DVR, but as it is, we never have time to watch all the stuff we have set to tape anyhow.
I was most surprised that TW’s new feature only allows a user to watch the program later the same day (before midnight). Personally I’d want a week to watch a program. I’d also want to be able to fast forward through a program and its commercials if there was only one segment of the program I was interested in watching. (Being prevented from skipping commercials embedded in the parts of the program I am watching seems like a fair tradeoff to me for free time-shifting.)