Up close and personal: personal video recorders and other flexible TV viewing options will have catastrophic impact on advertising-dependent television. Chris Forrester outlines the situation in markets where tomorrow's technology for Asia is being used today.(technology)

Television Asia, March, 2005 by Forrester, Chris

"Personal Video Recorders are set to be the biggest thing in television since, well colour TV." So--predictably--says the sales and marketing boss of a leading PVR manufacturing company. We'll excuse him his enthusiasm, but there's a building body of evidence that the prediction could well be spot on. In the UK for instance, 77% of advertising breaks are skipped in Sky homes during the 42% of shows that are recorded. Other research indicates that up to 90% of PVR-enabled households will skip the adverts (although analysts also point out that not all programming is recorded).

Although not officially supported by broadcasters, PVRs in one form or another are all over Asia, either in the form of recordable DVD players hooked directly to television sets or...

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