Skip to main content

Impact of New DVRs on TV Viewing Behavior

Informitv reports that UK satellite pay-TV service provider BSkyB now has over two million Sky+ digital video recorder (DVR) boxes installed.

Sky plans to allow recordings to be activated over the web, and to introduce 'push' video-on-demand services. The company also released new research on how Sky+ affects viewing behavior.

In Sky+ households, time-shift record and replay accounts for 22 percent of all viewing of programs originally scheduled between 9pm and 10pm and 17 percent of those scheduled between 10pm and 11pm. Across all channels, time-shifting accounts for just over 12 percent of total viewing through Sky+ boxes.

Drama programs accounts for nearly 40 percent of all time-shifted viewing, followed by documentaries at just under 15 percent, entertainment at 13 percent and movies at 9.5 percent. Current affairs programs accounts for just 1.2 percent while news and weather represent just 0.6 percent of time-shifted viewing.

Nearly a third of viewing of the 'Fox FX' channel is time-shifted in Sky+ homes, as is around a quarter of that for 'More 4' and the 'Hallmark' channel.

The research is based on viewing in Sky+ homes from February to December 2006. The 'Sky View' panel provides a measurement of actual viewing behavior in a representative sample of 30,000 Sky pay-TV subscriber homes.

Popular posts from this blog

The Billions Bet on Tentative AI Demand

Gartner's latest worldwide IT spending forecast exposes a trend every CIO has already felt in budget negotiations. Total spending will climb 14.2 percent in 2026, reaching $6.37 trillion. It seems that the IT infrastructure market is simply having a strong year. However, the more useful insight is how unevenly that growth is distributed. The Headline Number vs. The Real Story Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are absorbing capital at a pace several multiples faster than devices, communications services, and traditional IT services. This is not incremental growth spread across a healthy portfolio. It is a wholesale reallocation of enterprise technology budgets toward AI infrastructure, made on the expectation that demand for AI workloads will justify the outlay before that demand has been fully proven. Where the Money is Going Data center systems are forecast to grow 62.5 percent in 2026, that's up from 51.6 percent growth in 2025, reaching $822 billion....