Do you skip or watch commericals on a DVR?

In my last home town newspaper, the venerable Mercury News, there’s an interesting entry on the gmsv blog: “Next, we plan to send researchers to actually live among the TiVo people and study their mysterious ways” that cites this New York Times story: “People with digital video recorders like TiVo never watch commercials, right? Add that to the list of urban — and suburban — myths.”

This is something we supposed a few years ago, in that when you introduce a DVR into your home, you watch television differently. In some cases, you speed through commercials. In other situations, you may watch and replay commercials of real, direct interest, of ones that capture your attention.

“The story cites new data from the Nielsen Company showing that people with DVRs still watch, on average, two-thirds of the commercials — a reassuring finding for all stake holders in the ad business.”

That should really be a surprise to anyone with a DVR in their home… two-thirds? Really? In our home, we speed through many dull 30 second spots, but on occassion, we’ll stop and replay ones that hit the mark. But the dull certainly outnumber the ones that we’ll watch. As the article goes on to say, “Sometimes the commercials are so entertaining, you want to watch them.”

No kidding. I watch the TV to be entertained and informed — why should commercials offer anything less?

What’s the last commercial you remember watching again (‘rewind’ or back seven seconds on the old DVR)? For us, it was the trailer for the new movie “300” from Warner Brothers. It captures the dark and the frenetic nature of what promises to be a very good action film, and hopefully a good adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the few Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae.

That and a few commercials with anthropomorphic animals (like this one from Japan) or insurance commercials with a silly bent (I’ll admit, I enjoy some of Geico’s celebrity cameos).

Tags: microsoft, dvr, pvr, media center, Windows Media Center .