Cord cutting advice for heavy DVR user

[Zookster]

Like I said above, in the past three years of regularly participating in various online discussions for OTT live TV services (mainly PS Vue and YTTV), not once did I ever hear someone say, "Gee, I really wish this service had a super slo-mo, single-frame advance feature for its DVR." Fast-forwarding is the main thing people want, to skip commercials. PIP is great and I hear that come up, but it isn't a DVR feature per se. (PS Vue has a form of PIP called multi-view, BTW.)

 

[harshness]

Clearly, most people are willing to live with generic trickplay functionality for a live buffer, plus name-based recording as they are willing to suffer with crappy cable STBs.

Let's not forget that this thread was started by someone who considers themself a "heavy DVR user" and is/was a Hopper user. In that context, VCR level control may not meet the need.

 

[ncted]

Let's not forget that this thread was started by someone who considers themself a "heavy DVR user" and is/was a Hopper user. In that context, VCR level control may not meet the need.

Seems like from their original post that the killer DVR feature they want is suggestions. Pretty much every OTT service I've tried does this. Beyond that, determining whether or not the trade offs of cloud DVRs are worth it will probably require some experimentation on their part. FWIW: I've tried all but PS Vue, and they all have upsides and downsides. As most of what we watch is on demand with no commercials, the DVR functionality is becoming less and less important to my wife and I as time goes by.

 

[harshness]

Like I said above, in the past three years of regularly participating in various online discussions for OTT live TV services (mainly PS Vue and YTTV), not once did I ever hear someone say, "Gee, I really wish this service had a super slo-mo, single-frame advance feature for its DVR."

That may change as more experiment with OTT live TV services. I expect that many of the hold-outs are holding out because they're afraid of losing something important to them. A comprehensive DVR may be high on that list.

Let's not overlook that those who subscribe to OTT live services number less than 5 million. To ascribe that population's preferences to the rest of the pay TV viewers (80 million) is not good science.

 

[harshness]

Seems like from their original post that the killer DVR feature they want is suggestions.

As you know, the DISH DVRs don't do suggestions so that may be something additional that the TS wants.

 

[ncted]

As you know, the DISH DVRs don't do suggestions so that may be something additional that the TS wants.

Sorry, I misread the post. He wants name-based recording of new episodes.

 

[Zookster]

That may change as more experiment with OTT live TV services. I expect that many of the hold-outs are holding out because they're afraid of losing something important to them. A comprehensive DVR may be high on that list.

Let's not overlook that those who subscribe to OTT live services number less than 5 million. To ascribe that population's preferences to the rest of the pay TV viewers (80 million) is not good science.

Given that fewer than half of households in the US even use a DVR (source), I would say it's even worse science to suggest 80 million people may be holding out mainly for more advanced DVR functions. I would think channel selection, reluctance to change, promo deals and current contract commitments, bundling discounts, and lack of awareness/confusion about OTT live TV services would be much higher on the list of reasons people haven't made the switch. The interests and tastes and needs of folks who frequent techie-forums do not represent the average consumer.

 

[SpaethCo]

Let's not forget that this thread was started by someone who considers themself a "heavy DVR user" and is/was a Hopper user. In that context, VCR level control may not meet the need.

The primary concern seemed to be around the number of things you can record on any given night.

During prime time I’ve been known to record up to 8-10 shows in one night.... But the best part of the DVR is setting my favorite shows to automatically record new episodes which prevents me from having to keep up with what shows I watch and when new episodes are available.

In this case, streaming providers take care of that because you don't have tuner restrictions. If you really wanted to, for most services you could set every single program on every single channel to record every single night.

 

[harshness]

Given that fewer than half of households in the US even use a DVR (source), I would say it's even worse science to suggest 80 million people may be holding out mainly for more advanced DVR functions.

I don't have access to Statista (that mentions 43.5 million DVR users in the descriptive text) but a report by Leichtman Research Group in 2018 (perhaps the source of Statista's numbers) gave numbers of 52% of MVPD subscribers having at least one DVR and 43% of the same group had more than one DVR.

50+% of 80 million is a lot more than 5 million. Of that percentage, they're surely not all hardcore users but if only 12.5% are, they outnumber the households that use OTT live streaming.

Since moving to OTT necessarily means forfeiting some of the luxuries of a real DVR, I would expect that the bias would be further skewed as people who desire to retain these features may opt away from the OTT live option altogether until the feature gap (whether useful features or not) closes.