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Submitted: May 17, 2012 - 8:19am
Last updated: May 17, 2012 - 8:27am
Last updated: May 17, 2012 - 8:27am
Source:
New York Times
Author:
Brian Stelter
Location:
New York, NY, United States
Broadcast television executives came to New York this week, as they do every year, to talk up their new TV shows in front of advertisers. This year, they are having to talk about yet another technology trying to tear them down.
The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV programming. Turn it on, and all the ads recorded on most prime-time network shows are automatically skipped, no channel-flipping or fast-forwarding necessary. Some reviewers have already called the feature, named Auto Hop, a dream come true for consumers. But for broadcasters and advertisers, it is an attack on an entrenched television business model, and it must be strangled, lest it spread.
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Comments
Why don’t CBS, FOX, and NBC execs want consumers to enjoy commercial-free TV? It’s what we want! I’m a customer and employee of Dish, and I think Auto Hop is great because you can easily watch commercial-free TV. A well known consumer advocacy group, Public Knowledge, agrees that people should have the right to control how they watch TV. They’re taking a stand for consumers by creating a petition that tells CBS, FOX, and NBC media to keep their hands out of your living room and DVR. Sign their petition to keep control of how you watch TV http://bit.ly/KFdn1Q
The Auto Hop feature of PrimeTime Anytime isn't an ad eraser, as the ads are still there. All Auto Hop does is let you choose whether or not you want to hop over the commercial breaks with PrimeTime Anytime recordings. This really is no different than the 30 second skip function that is already part of many DVRs; it's just more user friendly. I'm one of the only people in my office at DISH who has a Hopper at home so far, and having used Auto Hop for the first time this week I love how much easier it is to catch up on my shows now. Instead of pressing the skip button several times each time a commercial comes on, I can have choose to have Auto Hop do it for me. Essentially it comes down to DISH offering us a choice, and that is never a bad thing.