A few interesting facts in today’s Media Guardian piece on BSkyB plans to offer ‘video on demand… through the use of additional recording capacity on the hard drive of newer boxes.’ They reckon five million viewers are now using the service, with two million active boxes out there. Homes with Sky+ watch 12.2% of their TV in ‘timeshift’, with blokey channel FX scoring just short of a third of its total viewing in non-live conditions. But people don’t want delayed news, with only 0.6% of news viewing being non-live. Makes sense.
Plans to ‘force’ a package of preselected recordings make sense, too. I’m just surprised it’s taken so long. I wonder how they’ll make judgements on what constitutes ‘a selection of the week’s top programmes’?
Responses
Eeek – FX is ‘blokey’? I’m sure I watch ‘Huff’ and ‘Medium’ on FX (although maybe Medium is on SciFi) and also ‘Family Guy’. I almost never watch any of the satellite channels live, purely because of the ridiculous length of the ad breaks. I reckon we watch 50-75% in timeshift. It’s a constant battle to keep the box down to only 75% full.
I’ve never seen the sense in BBC video podcasts of news either – why would you watch out of date news clips on your mobile phone? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Like the new banner – how’s your eyesight doing?
I’m prepared to withdraw the ‘blokey’ reference, although I’m sure that was part of their explicit mission statement when they launched. Good to see a fellow Family Guy fan by the way, Mel. Best thing on TV at the moment.
Eyesight? Going great, thanks for asking. It’s not quite as dramatic a change as, say, trying contact lenses for the first time. It’s really just a warm feeling knowing that it’s one less thing to worry about each morning and evening. Left eye was ‘cured’ in seconds; right eye is taking its time, but I’m more than happy with the current results.