All PVR

Is it too early to stat thinking about the Olympics in Beijing? Perhaps. But Mike Bloxham, writing at MediaPost, says that this may be the first Olympics where “a decent number of households have grown used to (if not addicted to) their DVRs.”

In this article, Mike incorrectly says that the Olympics are this year, but actually they start August 2008. So that means that one additional year where people will get introduced (and addicted) to DVRs.

Since research has shown that most DVR viewers primarily view sports events “live” rather than recorded, it may change how people and advertisers see the Olympics. Will advertisers ask for lower rates because of DVR viewers? Will viewers want to watch the Olympics live in order to stay current and not have to run away when co-workers start talking at the water cooler?

I’ve owned a PVR for many years and used it to watch a number of Olympics and what I discovered is that it’s too difficult to know when a certain event, for example Curling, is going to be on TV. Some sporting events are delayed for another time block or they’re buried somewhere inside a four hour block of programing making it impossible to find your event.

Also, when NBC was broadcasting one recent Olympics in the U.S., sister networks like CNBC or MSNBC would also broadcast some less popular sporting events. And it was difficult to know the right channel to watch. Plus, with time zone differences, it’s an even bigger challenge to know what’s going.

Searching for particular events or countries with my DVR was impossible since their electronic program guides aren’t very detailed. So I would have to go to the Olympic and network website and find out times and channels, then go back to my DVR and record it. It required too much work and was too cumbersome.

So I just gave up and watched whatever I happened to remember to record. Or I would even just watch some shows live or “nearly live” (delayed by just a few minutes).

Even so, I never had enough time to watch everything I recorded with my DVR. Between work, relaxing and other TV shows, I would sometimes delete programming without even watching it. Last Winter Olympics, I kept some recorded shows well after the Olympics had ended promsing myself I would watch it. But I never did, and simply deleted them.

Overall, watching the Olympics with a DVR was not a very intuitive experience. But at least I was able to bypass many of those annoying and lengthy Olympic commercials, and those treacly personal narratives that interrupt the sports. Let’s hope the networks and DVR companies learn a little bit and make it easy for viewers to watch their favorite Olympic events.

What’s your experience watching the Olympics with your DVR?

Olympics, DVR, Tivo, PVR, Beijing