# DISH Cheers Ruling on AutoHop, PrimeTime Anytime



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

*DISH Cheers Ruling on AutoHop, PrimeTime Anytime*

_TV viewers' right to skip commercials upheld_​ _Decision viewed as victory for "common sense and customer choice"

_​ ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Judge Dolly Gee of the United States District Court, Central District of California, today rejected Fox Broadcasting Company's efforts to bar DISH subscribers from use of the PrimeTime AnytimeTM and AutoHopTM features found on the pay-TV provider's HopperTM Whole-Home DVR.

The PrimeTime Anytime feature allows users to easily record the primetime shows on up to each of the four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) and save them for up to eight days. The AutoHop feature allows users to play back certain PrimeTime Anytime recordings commercial-free, starting the day after broadcast.

A copy of the ruling denying Fox's motion for preliminary injunction has not been publicly circulated because the Court is first giving the parties an opportunity to redact confidential trade information. The ruling relates to case CV 12-04529 DMG.

In the decision, Judge Gee found it likely that:


 Contrary to Fox's assertion, DISH customers using PrimeTime Anytime cannot be liable for copyright infringement;
 Copies made using the Hopper's PrimeTime Anytime feature do not infringe on Fox's exclusive reproduction rights under federal copyright laws;
 Neither the AutoHop commercial-skipping feature nor the PrimeTime Anytime feature constitutes unauthorized distribution under federal copyright laws;
 AutoHop does not violate the Video-On-Demand provisions of the 2010 retransmission consent agreement (RTC) between Fox and DISH;
 Copies of Fox programs that DISH makes as part of its "quality assurance" of AutoHop's functionality likely violate the RTC between DISH and Fox, and likely violate Fox's exclusive reproduction right under federal copyright laws, but;
 Fox has not established that is has suffered irreparable harm as a result of DISH's making the quality assurance copies.
 The ruling enables the Company to continue to offer its subscribers the Hopper Whole-Home DVR with both the PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop features. DISH is reviewing today's decision and assessing its impact, especially as it relates to the quality assurance process.

The following statement can be attributed to DISH Executive Vice President and General Counsel, R. Stanton Dodge: 
"Today's ruling is a victory for common sense and customer choice. 
"DISH is gratified that the Court has sided with consumer choice and control by rejecting Fox's efforts to deny our customers access to PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop -- key features of the Hopper Whole-Home DVR.

"The ruling underscores the U.S. Supreme Court's 'Betamax' decision, with the court confirming a consumer's right to enjoy television as they want, when they want, including the reasonable right to skip commercials, if they so choose.

"We look forward to vigorously defending AutoHop and Primetime Anytime, and the choice and control those features deliver our subscribers."

*About DISH* 
DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH), through its subsidiary DISH Network L.L.C., provides approximately 14.042 million satellite TV customers, as of Sept. 30, 2012, with the highest quality programming and technology with the most choices at the best value, including HD Free for Life. Subscribers enjoy the largest high definition line-up with more than 200 national HD channels, the most international channels, and award-winning HD and DVR technology. DISH Network Corporation's subsidiary, Blockbuster L.L.C., delivers family entertainment to millions of customers around the world. DISH Network Corporation is a Fortune 200 company. Visit www.dish.com.


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## dsw2112 (Jun 13, 2009)

I think this is going to make upcoming network contract negotiations interesting


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Agreed. I always thought Dish would win this fight... but in winning the battle we might lose the war.

Expect more disputes with LiLs and the "big four" and possible price increases more than usual going forward.


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## Araxen (Dec 18, 2005)

It still has to go through appeals doesn't it? Far from over if so.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It has not even begun ... this is just the denial of an injunction stopping DISH from offering the feature during the court battle. If Fox would have won the injunction then DISH would have had to turn off the feature while the case was argued (and Fox would have been liable for damages if they eventually lost).


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## tampa8 (Mar 30, 2002)

True dat. (as they say now) But there is a little more to be learned from it Generally when an injunction is not allowed it can mean the lawsuit will have an uphill or any favorable ruling won't have much impact.

This says it all.
"In the decision, Judge Gee found it likely that:"


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

tampa8 said:


> True dat. (as they say now) But there is a little more to be learned from it Generally when an injunction is not allowed it can mean the lawsuit will have an uphill or any favorable ruling won't have much impact.


For comparison, one of the earliest rulings in the now settled Voom case was the denial of an injunction. Voom sought an injunction forcing DISH to put the channels back on the system. This was not granted.

While that case did not complete (it was settled), it should be obvious that the denial of an injunction is not the final decision in the case.


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## runner861 (Mar 20, 2010)

Preliminary injunctions (injunctions before the matter has been adjudicated) are rarely granted. There must be irreparable harm possible for the injunction to be granted. Here there is no irreparable harm. Any harm caused by Dish if Dish loses the lawsuit will be fixed with payment of money from the losing party to the prevailing party. It is not like Dish is trying to do something that would cause irreparable damage, like blasting out a mountain to build a freeway.


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## ts7 (Nov 1, 2011)

"tampa8" said:


> True dat. (as they say now) But there is a little more to be learned from it Generally when an injunction is not allowed it can mean the lawsuit will have an uphill or any favorable ruling won't have much impact.
> 
> This says it all.
> "In the decision, Judge Gee found it likely that:"


More specifically this statement seems to give the best indication where this whole thing is going...



> Copies of Fox programs that DISH makes as part of its "quality assurance" of AutoHop's functionality likely violate the RTC between DISH and Fox, and likely violate Fox's exclusive reproduction right under federal copyright laws


Looks like the judge agrees with Fox but is giving Dish more rope with which to hang itself.

However, Charlie knows time is in his favor and, like the TIVO and VOOM cases, the longer he can draw it out, the better the chances he can get it settled on terms he finds acceptable. Even if this ends up with a judgment against Dish, I'm sure Charlie already has a contingency plan to get around the ruling like in the distant networks case. I would never bet against Charlie!


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## bigdog9586 (Jan 17, 2008)

It's a great feature BUT will come back to bite them/us as there is no law that says the networks HAVE to provide Dish their signal as lots found out a couple months back when networks were cut off. I say ditch auto hop and quit POing off the networks


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## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

poing off?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

bigdog9586 said:


> It's a great feature BUT will come back to bite them/us as there is no law that says the networks HAVE to provide Dish their signal as lots found out a couple months back when networks were cut off.


Most affiliates will grumble but still want viewers ... which is why the conflict from a couple of months ago was settled and the channels came back ... with Autohop.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I think yes, the networks will want the viewers, and Fox especially, which has invested heavily in product placement, will be ok whether or not customers see the ads. Also worth saying that many of these retrans agreements will be with the affiliates, not with the networks and Auto Hop is only on prime time (at least for now.) That said, I think there will be many content providers who will dig in and add a "no auto hop" clause to the retrans agreements for as long as they can.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Options appear to be:

1. Status Quo- Locals with AH
2. Locals without AH
3. No Locals
4. Locals without AH at higher rates

# 4 might sound good in theory to the providers, but would probably result in less 'paying' viewers.

#2 and #3 ain't gonna happen for various reasons.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SayWhat? said:


> 4. Locals without AH at higher rates


Intended to be "Locals with AH at higher rates"?

I would say that stations in general would want both the removal of AutoHop and higher rates. A few years ago it seemed all most stations wanted was carriage ... with some stations going for the cash. In recent years the push for cash and other consideration has grown.

If broadcasters had their way one could skip any part of the hour EXCEPT the commercials. That seems to be the norm for day care closings and other life critical weather bulletins .

I believe DISH will treat AutoHop as a non negotiable part of their service. They will not be turning it off for specific stations. The gamble is that stations will refuse carriage ... but over that particular issue I believe DISH has public opinion on their side.


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

I suspect that the day will come, when there are no "commercials" at all. Everything will be done via product-placement, and those darned "snipe" ads that jump up over the bottom half of the picture during the show. I'm seeing lots and lots of those right now on the SLC stations.

I wonder how DISH would handle the local stations all randomly delaying the start and stop times of commercial breaks, on a market-by-market basis? If every affiliate in every market changed their break times constantly, that could wreak havoc on the DishHopper thing. They'd need to have a thousand people logging breaks every night, on a thousand locals.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

kenglish said:


> I wonder how DISH would handle the local stations all randomly delaying the start and stop times of commercial breaks, on a market-by-market basis? If every affiliate in every market changed their break times constantly, that could wreak havoc on the DishHopper thing. They'd need to have a thousand people logging breaks every night, on a thousand locals.


If the number of DISH subscribers was enough to make that move worthwhile for a station they might consider it. The station would have to get the program from an early feed or stretch the first break out to have padding for later break movement. (There is also a patent application that suggests moving breaks would not defeat DISH's system.)

Anything the station or network would attempt would have to be done in a way that does not harm their regular viewers. It would be stupid for a station to hurt viewers who do not have DISH or the Hopper just out of spite for DISH. Then again, some stations have stupid management/owners.

Personally, I don't see the hassle as worth it ... and if a station actually went to the trouble to alter break times it would be a compliment to DISH that their system was valuable enough to consumers that the station would bother trying to defeat it.


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## jsk (Dec 27, 2006)

My prediction: The station owners will require that AH be disabled in their retrans agreements and they might go farther and eventually, they will require that the commercials be shown like they do online.


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## rocat1997 (May 17, 2011)

I don't see the difference between the auto hop and the 30 second skip ahead that I use religiously. I never ever watch something live. I skip all commercials and mostly watch commercial free channels. I would feel different if it was 2 minutes of commercials every 15 -20 minutes. Now they show commercials every few minutes, especially as the end of the program closes in. They cut up the program drastically to put in these commercials. Everyone made a fuss over AMC, and when it returned, I was reminded of the constant commercials they have, but still wanted a ton of cash.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Like I said before - 10 minutes per hour / 5 minutes per 30 minutes programming - nobody except the die hards would have said anything about the commercials. Now - we're seeing almost double that rate on ALL channels (i.e. not just broadcasters) and they are doing everything they can to add even more - if autohopper / commercial skipping will give me back that 20 minutes / hour , without having to to remember to keeping hitting skip - give it to me. If it was actually 10 minutes per hour - I doubt there would be a clamor for commercial skip from the viewers.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I skip commercials sometimes too... and would probably use AutoHop... but the point that keeps being missed is the ultimate price to home viewers.

Once this starts to eat into the price of advertising (companies stop paying high prices for commercial spots on TV)... then one of a few likely scenarios will emerge:

1. More product placement in the shows... this doesn't bother me, but some complain about seeing product placement in their TV shows.

2. More cost to customers when channels raise prices to the providers to get back money they are losing from advertisers... everybody will complain when prices go up.

3. Channels get dropped, perhaps permanently... again, everybody will complain if their favorite channel goes away.

Skipping commercials was better when it was "behind the scenes" and you might not use the skip button... or you might leave the room but you might not. With AutoHop, and one button press you don't have to see any commercials and don't have to actively engage yourself to skip them... and that will become something measurable that companies will use to stop paying for advertising at some point.


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## rocat1997 (May 17, 2011)

I do fully understand the logistics. But, they should realize mine. I pay $135 a month for tv. That should entitle me to skip or hop commercials. When I had an antenna, I couldn't do that. But my tv was free.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

rocat1997 said:


> I do fully understand the logistics. But, they should realize mine. I pay $135 a month for tv. That should entitle me to skip or hop commercials. When I had an antenna, I couldn't do that. But my tv was free.


Welcome to DBSTalk...

The problem is... what we pay for TV might be a lot, but it isn't the total cost to produce all the content that we watch. Commercials help pay for that... so if you get rid of commercials, then you would have to pay even more.

Nobody is actually forcing you to watch the commercials... they can't do that.


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## OneOfOne (Sep 19, 2006)

people either change the channel or use a dvr and watch on their time. this has been the case for years and will not change. the genie is out of the bottle. why do you think the broadcasters want to count dvr viewing as part of their ratings?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

OneOfOne said:


> people either change the channel or use a dvr and watch on their time. this has been the case for years and will not change. the genie is out of the bottle. why do you think the broadcasters want to count dvr viewing as part of their ratings?


But counting the DVR viewers means nothing if people are automatically skipping the commercials.

The only value in ratings is for the price they set for advertisers... if those advertisers know viewers have a feature that they enable once and it skips all the commercials without further interaction, then what advertiser is going to continue to pay for ads on those channels?

There is a HUGE difference between me walking out of the room or skipping by pressing multiple keys on the remote each break VS having a "click yes to skip all commercials for this show" button to press once.

I'm not talking about whether or not I like the feature (I do like) or whether or not I watch commercials (I often do not)... I'm talking about the "next step" here.

Up until now, while you or I probably weren't watching commercials, the network could always say I might be, because they knew I was watching their show... but now, with "AutoHop" the advertisers can ask "ok, yeah he watched the show BUT did he enable AutoHop?"

That is a HUGE difference that I don't understand why people aren't "getting it"... networks are nervous because they see the advertiser dollars going down the drain on this in a few years... and believe it or not, one way or another WE will pay for this feature OR lose the channels and content if we don't.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Good points. 

I can just see a fee negotiating session.....

"But you have all those people skipping our ads!"

"No, not many at all. Only 12% of our customers have auto hop, and of those, half don't know how to use it, a quarter don't like it, and many want to watch prime time that night, so we're down to about 98,000 viewers who are affected."


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## Inkosaurus (Jul 29, 2011)

Stewart Vernon said:


> I skip commercials sometimes too... and would probably use AutoHop... but the point that keeps being missed is the ultimate price to home viewers.
> 
> Once this starts to eat into the price of advertising (companies stop paying high prices for commercial spots on TV)... then one of a few likely scenarios will emerge:
> 
> ...


I wonder how this affects some other ends of the spectrum.

For instance I have a partnered youtube account through a gaming network where I take a 60/40 cut in my favor of ad earnings but have extra options for gearing my ads closer to my viewer demographics tastes.

I wonder if when the AH starts to get more widespread (you just know the other companies were just waiting to see the ruling on these cases) will the ads start to pay more to the youtube market..

Heres hoping... it pays my bills xD


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## rocat1997 (May 17, 2011)

How about this. Dish gets rid of auto hop but the networks agree to less commercials per hour. Maybe 3 mins every 20 mins. Not 4-5 minutes every 10 mins.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Dad... Mom says I can't have an injunction....

http://www.multichannel.com/satellite/fox-appeals-hopper-decision-ninth-circuit/140226


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

OK, son. Just go to your room and wait.....


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Worth noting... and I'm surprised nobody brought it up before...

Take another look at that AutoHop logo from Dish... and note how the kangaroo is looking over his shoulder.

Wonder why he might be doing that?


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

Broadcasters are not fighting the consumer to prevent him from skipping commercials. They are fighting the corporation that is skipping the commercials for the consumer.

(Maybe it's like driving down the freeway and not looking at the billboards, versus somebody planting trees in front of the billboards, to block the view of them. It devalues the advertising revenue of the sign company, and makes them have to put up a bigger/higher sign.)


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

kenglish said:


> somebody planting trees in front of the billboards, to block the view of them.


Sounds like a great idea to me.


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## fudpucker (Jul 23, 2007)

I see a day in which there are commercial overlays on the TV shows to ensure we see them, as more people skip commercials. It is already infuriating to me to be watching a TV show and have Matthew Perry or someone walking across the bottom of the screen, winking as a banner advertising his TV show scrolls across the screen. In the middle of another show. It's a small step from that to Depends ads doing the same thing.

And then I will long for the days of regular commercials and nothing on the screen as I watch a show.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

kenglish said:


> Broadcasters are not fighting the consumer to prevent him from skipping commercials. They are fighting the corporation that is skipping the commercials for the consumer.


Semantics, but the broadcasters are fighting against consumers having the option to skip commercials. Every time one plays an AutoHOP enabled recording the default is not to automatically skip commercials ... it is the consumer's choice to use the feature.

The problem that given a choice viewers WILL skip commercials isn't the fault of DISH ... it is the fault of the broadcasters for taking away so much of the hour that people are weary of seeing them. Viewers have worn out their skip forward buttons. DISH is just providing the service consumers want with less wear and tear on the remote.



> (Maybe it's like driving down the freeway and not looking at the billboards, versus somebody planting trees in front of the billboards, to block the view of them. It devalues the advertising revenue of the sign company, and makes them have to put up a bigger/higher sign.)


Fortunately there are highway beautification laws that prevent bigger/higher signs. Perhaps we need TV beautification laws to limit commercials.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

James Long said:


> Fortunately there are highway beautification laws that prevent bigger/higher signs. Perhaps we need TV beautification laws to limit commercials.


Now that's something I could get behind. Lady Bird Johnson, come back; we need you!


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

> Copies of Fox programs that DISH makes as part of its "quality assurance" of AutoHop's functionality likely violate the RTC between DISH and Fox....


What is the definition of "Quality Assurance" in this context?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Michael P said:


> What is the definition of "Quality Assurance" in this context?


I read it as DISH verifying that AutoHOP is working correctly by looking at stored copies of Fox programming. It sounds like something that should be allowed in a contract (recording for quality assurance purposes) but perhaps it was not spelled out. (And the reference is to a contract between DISH and Fox, not Federal law, so it is a guess as to what the contract actually allows.)


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

Limiting the commercials will just mean that the quality of the programming (and the mechanisms for transmitting it) will suffer.
Programming costs money, equipment costs money, and talented people cost money. 

Unless you're the BBC (with license fees), you can't make quality without advertising revenue and retrans fees. And, even the BBC is now talking about running ads, to make up for some of their massive budget cuts.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It seems like a lot of TV is turning to crap anyways ... I suppose that is a good thing about increased commercial load. Less crap between commercials. 

If you increase the quality of the programming and reduce the commercial load I'll watch the commercials. But at the current level of commercials there is no way. It is already bad enough that the shows are hard to follow due to the breaks. If I had to watch commercials I'd wouldn't watch the shows.

Hopper or not ... I'm going to avoid commercials. It is inevitable. And I am not alone.


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## rocat1997 (May 17, 2011)

Quality of programming. Interesting subject. Quality is quite low. Most channels run movies from many years ago. Plus they run them over and over and over. Quality is at its lowest. We pay for tons of commercials and old programming we've seen a dozen times. I read an article a couple of months ago that cable will be at $200 a month by the year 2020. Satellites not far behind. i believe this as we are heading their already. I don't have every channel and am already at $130. I used to pay $50 for dish. Granted I didn't have a dvr at the time, but, don't feel that it's worth $80 a month. Plus more commercials and reruns.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

That begs the obvious question... if you think current tv is overpriced and only shows old stuff that you don't want to watch... then why would you be subscribing now?


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## rocat1997 (May 17, 2011)

Good question. I do pay a big price to not watch it. I primarily watch hgtv, DIY, and our locals. Also, some hbo. My wife only watches encore westerns. she likes old stuff. Truthfully, it is too expensive.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I hope I didn't seem like a smart-you-know for asking... but it was logical.

I too don't like the price-creeping that keeps going upwards slowly but surely... but for the moment am still happy with the value I get for the price I pay.

One day that might change, though, and I'll be asking myself that very "is it worth it" question.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

If it wasn't for the DVR, I doubt I'd have a subscription these days.

When I was growing up, it was 6 minutes of commercials per hour. Now it's almost 20.

I can count the number of 'live' (non-sports) programs that I've watched in the past year on one hand. When my wife and I were watching a show live, she commented on how jarring it was to be FORCED to watch commercials, as opposed to seeing one flip by and MAYBE being interested enough to go back and watch it.

I've watched MAYBE two or three sports programs live and I end up putting them on pause and going to do something else, then returning when I can skip the 'dead time'.


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## Wilf (Oct 15, 2008)

djlong said:


> When I was growing up, it was 6 minutes of commercials per hour. Now it's almost 20.


That is one of reasons it was called the "Golden Age of Television." Television was B&W, and screens were small, but the programs were not fragmented like they are now. Even many of the commercials were entertaining.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

Wilf said:


> That is one of reasons it was called the "Golden Age of Television." Television was B&W, and screens were small, but the programs were not fragmented like they are now. Even many of the commercials were entertaining.


It was golden because it was live, it was novel, and all commercials were "new".

You could barely see the football, much less a tennis ball or hockey puck.

And, yes, there was much to be like about TV in the 50's, but I think there's much to be liked today. Esp. with a good DVR.....


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

James Long said:


> Hopper or not ... I'm going to avoid commercials. It is inevitable. And I am not alone.


You certainly aren't alone. I also have a use for the standard 30 second skip.
If I want to watch a football game that isn't important enough for me to watch live, I record it and use the 30 second skip at the end of each play which brings me to the start of the next play. Almost perfect. I can watch a game in one hour instead of the 3 1/2 hours live.

I also installed a HDHOMERUN (thanks to your suggestion JL) and have another way to record and watch events on my PCs.

My next step, now that the OTA dongle for the H/J systems has arrived, I can get serious about getting upgraded from my VIPs. Cabling nightmares ahead untangling the mess I have now.:grin:


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## TMan (Oct 31, 2007)

Television viewing without a DVR has become an almost intolerable exercise. The continuity is so jarring with the long, frequent commercial breaks. Not to mention that roughly _one third_ of the viewing time is not even the program itself. It almost feels like theft of my time and attention.

I don't watch much sports, but even then, I prefer to get well behind live TV and zip through downtime and commercials and catch up before the game ends. A football game is one hour on the game clock, yet its broadcast regularly exceeds three, though obviously part of that is the nature of the game with normal clock stoppages. Grandude is quite right about the convenience of 30-sec. skip being almost perfect between plays.

Someday, the lawyers and networks and providers will all conspire to disable our precious fast forward buttons. I've been a DVR user since 2003, and it'll be like having my eyeballs propped open in Clockwork Orange. Please pass the eye drops.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

I'll bet you 30:1 that FF will survive any nonsense. 

And the actual play time of a FB game is under 15 minutes.... that is, leaving out the time between whistling a dead ball and the next snap.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Laxguy said:


> I'll bet you 30:1 that FF will survive any nonsense.
> 
> And the actual play time of a FB game is under 15 minutes.... that is, leaving out the time between whistling a dead ball and the next snap.


You mean under 15 minutes PER QUARTER, I assume... Each quarter has a timed 15 minutes of play time...

So the minimum length of any football game is 60 minutes if you skip all the commercials, halftime, and other game stoppage times.


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## TMan (Oct 31, 2007)

"Stewart Vernon" said:


> You mean under 15 minutes PER QUARTER, I assume... Each quarter has a timed 15 minutes of play time...
> 
> So the minimum length of any football game is 60 minutes if you skip all the commercials, halftime, and other game stoppage times.


You're not considering all the time after plays where the clock runs but nothing is happening. It is not a big challenge to burn off a recorded game in 30-40 minutes with aggressive DVR play.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

TMan said:


> You're not considering all the time after plays where the clock runs but nothing is happening. It is not a big challenge to burn off a recorded game in 30-40 minutes with aggressive DVR play.


But that is still game time. If we're going to start quibbling over time spent doing nothing with the clock running, then you'd probably also skip over plays that don't gain yardage... and ultimately don't we all really only care about big-gain plays and scoring plays?

So... you could watch a highlights package in under 5 minutes for most games and get all the best/productive/scoring plays.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

TMan said:


> You're not considering all the time after plays where the clock runs but nothing is happening. It is not a big challenge to burn off a recorded game in 30-40 minutes with aggressive DVR play.


BIG-10 and PAC-12 each run a show called Football in 60 where they do the editing for you.

bein Sports has a show called 90 in 30 ... but that form of football is much more compressible.


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## Laxguy (Dec 2, 2010)

TMan said:


> You're not considering all the time after plays where the clock runs but nothing is happening. It is not a big challenge to burn off a recorded game in 30-40 minutes with aggressive DVR play.


Indeed that's what I meant. While studies have timed actual play time as closer to 12.5 minutes on average, watching a complete game in a half hour isn't hard. And that's every snap, every run, pass, fumble, field goal, etc. 
Purists may shudder at the thought of missing all the brilliant commentary during dead ball time.


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## TMan (Oct 31, 2007)

I am not a big sports guy, but there are a couple of local college football rivalries I'll burn through. I try not to skip more than a few actual plays, though.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Fox is back in court. The Hollywood Reporter indicated today:


> Fox Television is again making an attempt to shut down Dish Network's advertising-skipping DVR services.
> 
> The network is filing an amended lawsuit and a new injunction motion in a California federal court over Dish's Hopper with Sling, also known as "Dish Anywhere," which was introduced at CES in January.


It will be interesting to see how this all plays out at the Supreme Court level.


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## tampa8 (Mar 30, 2002)

The networks have lost viewership. NBC was actually the fifth watched network in the latest ratings, that has never happend to one of the big four. And the most watched shows on the the networks are all down, even if still doing well. You would think they would want their programming seen easily, not at a specific time or that you have to be in your living room.

The networks fear is tied to ratings. If you watch at another time other than the original airing, credit isn't always being given for those viewers, thus advertising revenue goes down. Nielson is looking into capturing some of those viewers.

It's worth mentioning, the Four major networks are supposed to be FREE. Again, FREE. For that they get the airwaves that TNT or USA etc do not get. And the advent of Satellite has done nothing but help them get their signal to people who otherwise might not get it. Yet they put up roadblocks to everything.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

tampa8 said:


> The networks have lost viewership. NBC was actually the fifth watched network in the latest ratings, that has never happend to one of the big four.


So which non-broadcast network beat NBC?

And isn't there another thread (in the TV forum) that is predicting the death of all broadcast because of the woes of one network?


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

I'm not predicting the death of all broadcast. It looks to me like Univision is doing well. I do think the 1958 broadcast channel economic model is on life support - meaning we're all being taxed by Congressional mandate to fund a nationwide bunch of failing local broadcast channels.

That's irrelevant to this thread though, and we have a new thread Fox is attacking the Hopper, Sling Adapter and Dish Anywhere now that picks up where this one left off.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

tampa8 said:


> It's worth mentioning, the Four major networks are supposed to be FREE. Again, FREE.


That is only partially true.

They are free, via the primary broadcast method... OTA.

We can all enjoy all that OTA broadcast television via the intended free transmission method.

There is no guarantee that you will receive a watchable signal for free... only that one is being broadcast via OTA and that you are welcome to watch it if you can receive it.

Any other method by which you get the programming is not guaranteed, and you are not entitled to it for free via those other methods.


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## EdBott (Nov 14, 2012)

Why isn't Fox going after Directv for the Nomad?


And does anyone remember the pocket dish? Wasn't that the same thing? How come Fox didn't care about that?


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