A story from E-Commerce Times says that DVR use is growing due to cable and satellite TV providers that are “pushing much of the growth with their offers of discounted and subsidized boxes and services.”

Additionally, Leichtman Research Group predicts that by 2011, DVRs will be in 60 million homes, or 50% of U.S. households.

LRG President Bruce Leichtman said that the DVR market isn’t driven by consumer demand. “It’s often about supply. This is a great example about the supply side pushing a product.”

Another analyst said that DVRs have moved from being a premium offering to a standard one.

Cable and satellite providers are essentially subsidizing them into the market, as has the growth o HDTV. DVR use increases because consumer usually upgrade their service to HD, then decide to get a DVR because it’s usually part of the set-top box anyway. Some providers just charge an extra $5 per month to get a DVR with the set-top.

LRG found that even though DVR ownership is increasing, only 45% of DVR owners record five or fewer programs a week. LRG says that 95 percent of all TV viewing in the U.S. is still live TV.

“We should not assume,” [Leichtman] continued, “that just because DVRs are in one out of every five homes that they’re dramatically changing the landscape of television overall even in the homes that have a DVR.”

Technorati Tags: Tivo, Comcast, DirecTV, EchoStar, cable, DVR

On Monday, EchoStar announced it was acquiring place-shifting company Sling Media for $380 million. Although many people expected Sling Media to be acquired, it seems many were shocked that it happened so soon.

Sling was one a pioneer place-shifting company, makers of the Slingbox. The device connects to the TV/cable box/DVR and lets users watch their TV shows anywhere there’s a broadband connection. A new feature, called Clip and Sling, allows users to create clips of their favorite TV shows and share them with friends.
The relationship between EchoStar and Sling go back a few years since EchoStar was an early investor. And teaming with Echostar means that Sling now has  deeper pockets. Says GigaOm:

Sling has established a nice brand, but in order to grow further the company needs deep pockets of a corporate master.

Meanwhile, EchoStar just asked the Internal Revenue Service if it can separate its technology and infrastructure assets by forming a spin off. The Sling acquisition will fall into the spinout.

You may also recall that EchoStar is in the middle of a lawsuit with Tivo. Tivo filed a lawsuit against EchoStar in 2004 saying that the operator of the satellite-based DISH Network, was infringing on its DVR patent.

Overall, I’d bet that Tivo is miffed now that EchoStar owns Sling. A combination of Tivo and Sling would have been a killer combination since many customers already own both a Tivo DVR and a Slingbox.

So some questions:

• Will EchoStar continue to allow Sling’s place-shifting from non-EchoStar devices?
• Will innovation be stifled at Sling now that it’s owned by a major provider?
• Will Sling move to a more ad-based model?

A short post on Consumerist tells a story of someone that bought a used DirecTivo HR 10-250 box from eBay and now DirecTV claims that it is an unreturned box and wants $600 for it. Although the story on Consumerist was confusing, many commenters believed that the box was stolen.

It seems that the original post from a blogger called Tobin clears up some of the mystery. After DirecTV shut down Tobin’s service, he managed to convey his story clearly and got the charge reversed. Even though DirecTV hasn’t sold the HR 10-250 for over a year, they assumed that the DVR was bought from DirecTV and charged him for it.
Lesson here? I don’t know if there is one. Except to be persistent, tell your story and you may prevail.

Another lesson? Be careful about buying DirecTivo’s from eBay, but at least it’s nice to know that you can still use them.

Bonus to Tobin: Nice theme!

The Wall Street Journal posted an article on Friday about DVRs and new features–like programming shows via cell phones and movie downloads from the Internet.

Although the article is mostly a re-hash of current DVR features and some recent news, one interesting tidbit is that Cablevision is looking to do away with a set-top DVR and give subscribers storage space within its network for recording shows.

This would cut costs and make DVRs more invisible and accessible to users. But the WSJ says that Hollywood doesn’t like network DVRs because they violate their copyrights.

How can this be? Does where and how you store content affect the legality? Or is it just another battle between Hollywood content providers and cable/satellite companies?

I don’t know if I would like the networked DVR. I enjoy having complete control of my content on a set-top-box that I own and have in my house. Having my cable company in control seems like they might dictate what I can and cannot do with shows that I record.

And how about using my DVR as a media hub? I like being able to watch Internet content on my TV with Tivo, or watching photos from my networked PCs on my TV. Would I lose this ability with a networked DVR?

Still, I can think of a few good things about a networked DVR:

1. Unlimited Storage Space. Hopefully, my cable company wouldn’t limit how much storage I have. One way to make money from this is to offer consumers tiers of storage space, so those who save lots of TV shows can pay more per month, for example.
2. One Less Box Under the TV. If I didn’t have my set-top DVR, I’d have less clutter and more space for something else. Like a new Xbox 360 or Wii, for example.
3. Not Having to Upgrade to New DVR. Tivo Series 1 users wouldn’t have to upgrade to a Series 2 or 3. They can just upgrade to the next tier. The same thing should be possible when you upgrade to HD and don’t want to spend $800 on a Tivo Series 3.
4. Backups of DVR Content. I’d hate to lose shows that I’ve been saving for weeks or months. Having them stored off site would be great in case my DVR suddenly conks out and loses all my shows.
5. Not Buying Multiple DVRs for Every Room. This can save consumers lots of money if they don’t have to buy a separate DVR for every room. Renting an extra set-top box, for example, is much better than buying another HD DVR.

Even with a networked DVR, I’d still like to download shows to my home computer, and save them on DVDs. Perhaps the cable company will be forced by Hollywood to charge a fee for users that do this. If the fee was affordable enough, like a few dollars per show, I wouldn’t mind.

So what do you think? Are network DVRs the future? What are the plusses and minuses? Will Tivo remain viable if cable and satellite companies turn to network DVRs instead?

AT&T announced that it has added the ability for customers to record from their HomeZone DVRs using mobile phones. That’s a first for any DVR service–Tivo allows customers to program their DVRs using any web browser, but just today, Reuters said that Verizon is adding this functionality for Tivo boxes for $1.99 a month.

Although this sounds cool, I’ve never really wanted to use my cell phone to program my DVR. I’d rather do it on the web, where I can type and search for shows much more easily. Although I haven’t tried it I’m sure that smart phones like Treos are able to access Tivo’s website to search and program TV shows. (Memo to myself, add Andrew Dice Clay’s new show to my Tivo using my Treo.)

The Reuters article points out:

Analysts said such services may help attract or retain customers, but several said that only a small number of wireless subscribers are looking to remotely program DVRs. Less than 10 percent of respondents to a recent survey said they wanted such a feature, according to Jupiter Research analyst Ina Sebastian whose firm organized the survey.

HomeZone is AT&T’s satellite TV service in partnership with Echostar. AT&T says that a future feature will allow customers to trigger video-on-demand downloads to their set-top-boxes as well as access to photos remote access to photos and music.

Customers need a Web Access Protocol (WAP) 2.0-compliant cell phone or other handheld.

[Via DMW, ZatzNotFunny and Press Release]

Technorati Tags: HomeZone, AT&T, DVR, PVR, Tivo, Verizon