• by Wayne Friedman , March 22, 2013

TV time-shifting -- the activity of consumers and their DVRs -- can be wasteful.

A new study says about a third (36%) of all worldwide recorded TV content is never watched. In the U.S. that number is higher -- 41%, per Motorola Mobility's annual media survey.

Consumers behavior with recorded content comes in different variations. For example, 72% are "hoarders" -- recording to collect the "box-set" of a specific TV program.

The reasons for recording: 77% record because there is other content airing at the same time that the viewer would prefer to watch live, while 68% globally record to skip ads on commercial channels. It's higher in the U.K. and the U.S, where this reason scores 75% and 74% respectively.

Motorola says that almost a third -- 29% -- of global weekly TV viewing is of recorded content.

Overall TV viewing says the average consumer watches 19 hours of TV content and six hours of movie content a week.  The U.S. is at the top of the list among countries --  23 hours of TV and six hours of movies watched each week. The lowest TV consumption is seen in Sweden and Japan, at 15 hours and two hours, respectively.

Concerning new technology, consumers want to be able to move content between devices more easily, and 76% would be interested in a service that automatically loaded content a user liked to their mobile phone or tablet.

Tablet users are more likely than non-tablet owners to use a service provider’s TV catch-up service  -- 47% versus 31%.

Motorola Mobility’s Media Engagement Barometer says it's an independent global study of video consumption habits among 9,500 consumers in 17 countries.

"DVR photo from Shutterstock"