Is DVR the glue that binds families?

Consumers worldwide rank the digital video recorder (DVR) as the second most essential household technology item they can’t live without, beaten only by the mobile phone, according to an NDS survey of 1,000 DVR owners. When general household appliances were considered, the DVR came in third after the washing machine and the microwave oven (and the hairdryer above all else in Italy). The international study also found that more than three quarters of families that own DVRs attribute the technology to a happier home life.

With more than 70% of DVR owners claiming they can’t live without their DVR, respondents indicated they’d give up their landline phone, dishwasher, radio and MP3 player before foregoing their DVR. Regardless of the country, 60% of these DVR owners with a partner agreed that having a DVR has improved their relationship as well. In the US, UK and Australia, this was because they could watch their favorite shows together, while Italians attributed the happiness boost to easier planning of the evening’s viewing.

“Four out of five homes were more harmonious and had less fights or discord because of viewing habits,” said Steve Tranter, vice president of broadband and interactive for NDS. “They didn’t feel they were missing out. They could find programming they both liked and all members of the family could watch and view the content in their own time, just for themselves, when they had a moment.”

NDS supplies DVR technology to 18 pay-TV operators across the world. The vendor conducted the survey to mark its 13 millionth worldwide deployment of its XTV DVR, a turnkey platform including VideoGuard conditional access, multichannel recording and over-the-air remote recording. The company also provides set-top-box measurement and audience rating figures for its operator customers to target their consumers with personalized advertising. Tranter said that when consumers were asked about their ad-viewing habits while watching DVR, they replied that they skip about 40% of all advertisements. In reality, at least for BSkyB DVR owners in the UK, audience measurement revealed that the actual percentage of ads skipped was between 4 and 5%.

“There’s a big disconnect between what people think they are doing and what they are actually doing, which should put advertisers’ minds at rest,” Tranter said. “When you do watch content off DVR, you tend to watch more content, so if you take the 4 to 5% skipping of ads, they are naturally watching more ads in total because they are watching more content in total.”