pvr experience #17

Just after watching the very funny Huff off the PVR last night there was a promo for a DNZ documentary on New Zealand English which I only just noticed. The subject of language being of interest I immediately grabbed the PVR control to rewind and play it again.

It took a few seconds of me attempting to control realtime transmission to realise that this just wasn’t going to happen.

What was interesting for me was the natural expectation that I now have that I could control my TV experience. Stop, rewind, fast forward…skip.

I could configure the Topfield to enable me to do this for the channels it can receive (e.g. ONE, TV2, CCTV-9 and DW-TV) but it means having it constantly recording. I suppose I should set it up to test this functionality.

The other thing to note is, yes, I wanted to replay something between the programme content. Okay it’s the first time but the idea that all ads and promos are suffered by the audience because they are forced to is, I believe, bogus. People want to be informed about choices, be they consumer choices or programme watching decisions. I subscribe to some trade magazines primarily for the advertisements.

[huge topic alert] The challenge is to better target advertising so that it becomes relevant and of interest to the viewer, so that they actively seek to watch it.

BTW: For those in NZ a Topfield can be acquired from Hook Technologies. I see they have the earlier 4000 model for just $715.