The Viewing Revolution

A quiet revolution is happening in living rooms across the world. The rise of the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is allowing viewers to control their own viewing. PVRs provide essentially the same functionality as a VCR, but it's all so much simpler and easier.

The key benefit of the PVR is the ability to record a particular programme whenever it's on and whatever channel it's on. There is no more searching through TV schedules. The icing on the cake is that PVRs make it very easy to fast-forward through the adverts. With a PVR a one hour programme becomes a 45 minute programme. Once you have tried TIVO, ReplayTV, MythTV or SkyPlus then your TV viewing will never be the same again.

For years viewers have used adverts as an excuse to make a cup of tea or pop to the toilet. But now increasing numbers of viewers are simply using their PVRs to fastforward through the ad breaks.

The advertisers are beginning to get worried about this. ABC is reputedly trying to get PVR manufacturers to disable the fastforward functionality. If this does happen one fallback is MythTV, an opensource system which allows you to build your own PVR system using a standard computer.

But be warned TV viewing without the constant interruption by the noise and visual pollution of adverts is strangely addictive.