TiVo Makes Me (and My Family) Smarter

Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) make me and my family smarter. They do this by allowing us to maximize the value of our TV and video experience. Yet, as more and more Americans discover this unique, new “smart” box, a lack of proper consumer education and traditional market economics suggest the creation of a new, “DVR Digital Divide.” Put shortly, for a service this valuable, it should not allow for those with the wherewithal to get smarter and yet those without the means to be left behind.

One of the best examples of the brain growth even a basic DVR allows came in mid-summer, as our family watched an NBC evening news show featuring a story about New York City’s Sloan-Kettering Medical Center and advances made in cancer treatment. During an interview of a lead doctor, his French accent caused him to pronounce the word “tumor” in such a way that it confused the point he was making and detracted from a clear understanding of his message.

Absent the ability to replay the live video on a DVR (which was true of the majority of the other tens of millions of Americans who watched the same news segment), I would have simply gone on watching the rest of the story. Yet, the point is, I would have missed a key understanding. Because I have a DVR, I was able to stop the video, replay the interview, listen again more intently and place the right word “tumor” in its proper context, thus permitting me to acquire a better (and correct) understanding of the entire segment. Having the DVR allowed my family to get more out of the message and enhanced the experience. Having a DVR was like being able to take a book and reread a confusing passage. Having a DVR made me and my family smarter.

DVRs also make my family smarter by helping to eliminate wasted time and make the time spent that much more relevant to our learning and entertainment needs.

When I can watch a TV show that has been recorded on my TiVo or a similar DVR device, and choose to fast forward through an annoying or irrelevant advertisement, I am choosing to watch the core 22 minutes of a half hour show, without wasting my time on 8 minutes of advertising some executive in TV Land has decided I will watch. This kind of opportunity is properly in tune with what I expect as an American: The freedom to choose. The choice makes us all smarter.

As important, when I can reach into the Interactive Program Guide (IPG) within my DVR, and chose to record an upcoming show, I am not only able later to control the advertising input, but I am also able to step outside a linear live programming schedule, and instead create my very own programming schedule. Because I chose the program, it is one that I will be more interested in, and pay more attention to. Because I control the video, I become less of a couch potato and a smarter person.

In the same way that quicker access to more data via the Internet makes my family and millions of other American families smarter, so, too, does access to more video content via my DVR make us smarter. And given an average of more than four hours per day that the average American spends in front of a TV monitor, a DVR means an awful lot of daily opportunities to get that much smarter. Plus, a DVR is a device made for just about everyone, because it allows everyone to locate and view their own specific choice of niche programming, which one way or another appeals to just about everyone. Moreover, study after study shows that American women who manage households, like my wife, are especially attracted to the ease of use and video management features DVR offer the family.

Another intelligence-enhancing DVR software application is an interface that allows the user to search program guides for quick access to updated TV programming information, and permits the user the ability to record recurring programs.

Finally, when I watch a program and want to access other video that is related to the show’s topic, my DVR permits that. The process is like being in a large library and putting one book back into the shelf, then reaching for another one right beside it on the same or a slightly similar topic. The DVR can get me that much more video detail on the topic that interests me. My TiVo, again, makes me and my family smarter.

But then, so what?

At this point, a major challenge remains: How to educate consumers to the value of the DVR revolution, and how to make this pivotal tool available to all levels of the mass market?

It is interesting to note the early objections of one America’s leading telecom executives, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, when he first encountered the forthcoming DVR revolution. Because of a preference for Video-On-Demand (VOD) (which only a two-way system, like cable, can truly offer), and concerns about Digital Rights Management (i.e., piracy), as recently as 2000, Roberts clearly touted his preference for VODs over DVRs. Yet, to his credit, when he saw the best that DVRs could offer – to both his subscribers and his company – he quickly adjusted his thinking and began implementing new in-house VOD-DVR solutions in given neighborhoods nationally. Beginning in 2006, Comcast will also offer TiVo-branded DVRs hardware and software. That will grow the DVR experience for Comcast and its 22+ million subscribers. Together with the other service providers in the multichannel Pay TV market – satellite and telephone video providers included – more and more consumers will hear about and experience the DVR phenomena.

Recently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Museum in Alexandria, VA, listed the DVR as “one of the key inventions that impacts people’s everyday lives.” What people everywhere need to learn (and become involved in) is that one of the most significant ways a DVR achieves that process is by allowing them to review and manipulate video, so that they better understand and enjoy it, and thus become smarter. On the publishing side of this consumer education message, even The Wall Street Journal has taken to describing video that is worth recording as a “TiVo Tip.” These things surely, too, help spread the word.

Projections by various television analyst companies suggest that DVRs will find their way into the living rooms and bedrooms of as many as half of the 110 million U.S. TV Households (TVHHs) by the end of this decade (or within a year or two of that date). So the word will reach many.

But this begs a question: What about the other half of Americans who do not acquire DVRs, a half made up of almost 55 million TVHHs?

Recently, Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) introduced federal legislation to help accelerate the build-out of broadband to rural America. If the law is passed, cable operators would have to pitch in a portion of their cable modem revenues to subsidize the delivery of universal broadband. Currently, only libraries and schools receive financing to help with the roll-out of broadband.

In a similar vein, one wonders if libraries and schools should be the first to receive help with the purchase and universal roll-out of new, multichannel service connected DVRs? Observe the power a teacher acquires when he or she can simply, with the push of a couple buttons, record live or later in the day or night, one or more Discovery or National Geographic programs, and later pause, rewind or fast forward them, and then carefully dissect every important section. Or is the single family TVHH the better target? Not unlike the telephone subsidies of many decades past, the “have” consumers could be asked to pay into a Universal DVR Service Fund, whereby the “have nots” could utilize in-home DVRs, as well. Would a corporate giveaway, similar to that of Apple Computer in the 1990s, coupled with large tax incentives, be a solution for deployment of DVRs into America’s educational institutions? Or might one wealthy individual after another, across America, aid his or her community by simply donating a DVR and a digital multichannel TV service to these same institutions? In short, shouldn’t this tool, permitting so much more brainpower, be available to a greater public base than simply those that can readily afford it?

For all its power to enhance America’s intelligence quotient – especially in an ever more dominant Video Age, which is quickly replacing an earlier Reading Age – the DVR revolution is worth introducing en masse to all levels of American society.