June 16, 2005 - Podcast #12
Our email address is hdtvpodcast@mac.com
This weeks show
Today
we will cover the news, we received some email about your favorite DVDs
for showing off your Home Theater, Braden will talk about backyard
theaters, and Ara will talk about a DVR study done by ESPN.
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Outdoor Theater
The
summer is here. It's time to fire up the bar-b-que and sit down to a
great movie or HDTV sporting event, in your own back yard. So what will
you need to make it happen? Here's a short list of ideas.
1. Projector. It really isn't practical for most people top take their
big screen TV outside, just to watch a baseball game in High
Definition, so we'll need a projector (and a screen, but we're getting
ahead of ourselves).
If you plan on watching during the day, you'll need some serious lumens
to overcome the awesome power of the sun, so let's assume we'll only be
watching in the evening or at night. In that case, a decent projector,
should do the trick. Like any other display device, make sure it has
the proper inputs and resolution to fit your needs.
2. Screen. What good is a projector without a screen? If you're on a
budget, a white sheet or painter's tarp can fill in for a screen, but
if you want a true theater experience, you'll need to get the real
thing. A retractable screen can easily be installed under the eaves of
your house, or mounted to a tripod style stand for easy set up and tear
down.
3. Speakers. Ideally, we could install speakers that would work well
for listening to some tunes in the backyard when they aren't being
tasked as a 5.1 surround system. Several companies including Klipsch, Boston, and Niles
sell all weather speakers that can be permanently mounted in the
backyard. Place three of them along the same wall where your screen
will be, and you're all set. Klipsch even sells an all weather subwoofer to complete the true outdoor theater experience.
But what about the surround speakers? We need a few back in the yard
some where, but those all weather speakers would stand out a bit too
much. Have a look at the rock speakers by Stereostone and Rockustics.
They will blend seamlessly into your backyard landscaping, and provide
a great surround sound experience for your outdoor theater.
4. Equipment. Most of us wouldn't want to go out and buy a whole home
theater setup just for a temporary outdoor theater. If you've installed
the speakers above, you already have a receiver or a processor and
amplifier running them, so just connect a DVD player and a channel
tuner and you're done. If your outdoor setup is a little more
temporary, you may need to play around with it a bit. Try using an
integrated Receiver/DVD unit such as the one made by or NAD or JVC to reduce cabling, clutter and headache.
Once you've got your receiver in place, you'll need to get an HDTV feed
from somewhere. You can either split your feed and run a coax cable to
a new HDTV tuner for the outdoor theater, or you can use your existing
tuner and run a long cable for the audio and video signals. Really long
cable lengths tend to destroy signal quality, so we'll need to look at
some alternatives. Gefen
has products that can extend HDMI or DVI up to 150 feet using super
cheap cat-5 cable. So we can get video, but how do we get anything more
than stereo audio? Looks like Gefen has us covered there as well, with a digital audio extender that will get us runs up to 330 feet.
So that's it, we've built our outdoor theater. Now it's time to get
throw some Jiffy Pop on the bar-b-que, sit back, and relax.
DVR Usage Study
ESPN recently released the results of a
six-month study to asses the affects of the Digital Video Recorder or
DVR on viewing habits. ESPN gave 157 TV households DVRs and recorded
their viewing habits. When it was all done ESPN concluded that the DVR
is really not a big deal.
The study was run in 2004 by Horowitz Associates. The study was
designed to understand what influence the DVR has on advertising. There
were some interesting facts:
- A third of the users said they did not skip past the ads.
- Those that did said that they did watch commercials if it pertained to something they were interested in.
- Ninety
of the 157 households returned the DVR when the trial was over. The
reason was cost or difficulty of use. Some of the users signed up for
Tivo so they incurred an additional cost. Today most cable companies
provide a DVR with no charge for the Tivo like functions. There is an
additional cost for the DVR though.
According to ESPN’s senior VP of research and sales development
Artie Bulgin, “The findings of this study certainly contradict the
prevailing wisdom that DVRs will become the norm in U.S. households and
that the 30-second spot will be rendered obsolete.”
For most users, skipping commercials is not the main reason for
using a DVR. Viewers liked being able to time shift what they watched.
The following breaks out 6 categories of DVR user according to ESPN:
Delayed Viewing
This viewer records a program or lets the
buffer fill with the first 20 minutes of a program and catches up by
skipping through the commercials. Once the show is viewed it is
deleted.
Probability that this viewer skips commercials - HIGH
Season Pass
This viewer records the programs when they
are originally aired and viewed later. This viewer doesn't want to miss
any shows in a series or soap opera.
Probability that this viewer skips commercials - LOW
Weekend Warrior
This viewer records during the week and
as the name suggests they catch up on the weekend. The warriors want to
be current, at their own pace.
Probability that this viewer skips commercials - MEDIUM
Long Haulers
This viewer will record large numbers of
programs and then go through all of them in one sitting. If you have
the patience it is a great way to watch serials.
Probability that this viewer skips commercials - HIGH
Rainy Day
This viewer records his/her favorite programs and movies and saves them for a rainy day.
Probability that this viewer skips commercials - LOW
Road Warriors
This viewer is usually on travel and will use the DVR to catch up on favorite programs once at home.
Probability that this viewer skips commercials - MEDIUM
Editorial Comments
I'll bet you anything that if they run the
study again today they will get different results. DVRs in service
today total 11 million according to the Yankee Group. That number is
expected to reach 33.5 million by 2008. With most cable companies
offering Tivo like service included in the price of the cable service
any resistance to cost will disappear.
Soon cable and satellite companies will offer networkable DVRs.
Imagine watching a show in your living room hitting pause and then
picking up in your bedroom. We saw this technology demonstrated at CES
2004 in the Voom both. Voom is gone but the technology is here. My Tivo
is so simple my 8 year old daughter can use it so I don't buy that the
technology is too difficult to use.
So I disagree with ESPN conclusions but I do not have hard data to prove my point. Email us your opinions of DVRs at hdtvpodcast@mac.com
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