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NewsGlobe: Today's News
IPTV 2007: PVRs/DVRs Boost Subscription TV Revenues
However, Questions Are Raised About Advertising Revenues
by Iain Morris
Operators might not think of the hardware as one of the big
attractions of IPTV, but customers quizzed recently by
Forrester Research rate their Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) as one of its most
compelling features. PVR’s are sometimes called Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and record programming without tapes or DVDs.
That came as pleasant if somewhat surprising news to David
Burks, a senior manager at hardware manufacturer Seagate.
Quoting Forrester at the IPTV World Forum in London
yesterday, Burks said that “PVRs engender strong feelings
among consumers and that the majority of users even claim
they have improved the quality of their family and social lives.”
“Only two percent of PVR users eventually abandon them,”
said Burks, who reckons that makes them a vital tool for
operators in reducing churn and maximizing IPTV revenue.
Indeed, the research indicates that 40 percent of PVR users
place such a premium on the value of the devices that they
are willing to pay for regulator storage upgrades.
And because familiarity with a PVR encourages users to
experiment with other features of pay TV, they have been
shown to increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) from existing cable and satellite
deployments, according to Burks. He says that surveys
conducted in the U.S. indicate that monthly ARPU is US$15.00
higher for cable customers that have a PVR, and US$11.00
higher for satellite customers with the device.
The message is clearly catching on among operators at the
show. Isabella Kosch, the product manager for
Swisscom, says that customers of Bluewin TV, Swisscom’s
recently launched IPTV service, are provided with a 160Gbyte
PVR for free, and that simple functionality (recording can be
done at the touch of a button) has been designed with the
aim of boosting usage.
In the future, Burks expects PVRs to become an even ‘stickier’
component of the IPTV mix as operators realize their full
potential as devices that can store a range of content other
than television programs, including; music and
photographs.
But not everyone is so upbeat on the issue. “The question is
what happens to the 30-second advertising slot with the
advent of the PVR,” says Ian Valentine, technical services
director for Sky Interactive.
Because PVRs allow customers to easily fast forward through
television content, they offer users a means of bypassing
commercials and could threaten the advertising-revenue
model.
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