• by Wayne Friedman , February 16, 2007

It's all in the playback.

Nielsen Media Research told clients at its meetings in Florida that when DVR playback is viewed closest to its original air date, more viewers tend to watch more of a program's commercials as well.

The longer viewers wait to watch a DVR-recorded program, the less inclined they are to watch that program's commercials. Not surprisingly, Nielsen says that sports and news are the most resistant to DVR taping. But if taping occurs, DVR playback will be the closest to its original airing.

For Nielsen, this research effort beefs up its array of digital measuring activities. The day before its Nielsen DigitalPlus service announced a deal with DirecTV, in which it will able to tap into some 300,000 set-top DirecTV boxes and glean various user activities. DirecTV customers will need to choose whether they want to be part of the panel.

Nielsen said the recent DVR data came from its NPOWER software system during the month of January.

Looking at 18-34 viewers in DVR households, Nielsen says nearly 100% of viewing for sports and news programming occurs within the same day of its original telecast. There was 85% playback for daytime dramas, and 75% playback for sitcoms and prime-time dramas during the same day.

Not surprisingly, it says DVD owners are young, better-educated and have higher incomes than the average TV household. It noted that 54% of DVD viewing occurs with two or more people--slightly higher than the 50% that occurs with live viewing with two or more people.

The research indicates that older VCR ratings continue to decline in the wake of growing DVR usage. VCR's contributed to just 2.4% of prime-time ratings, versus 3.1% in January 2006. Still, Nielsen says VCR recording is double that for daytime programming versus prime-time programming.

Nielsen also says about 20% of TV households have some form of personal video device, including portable DVD players. But only 4% of TV households own a video iPod of video MP3 player.

Nielsen also says a true mobile video standard has yet to emerge. When asked about current viewing of video on a mobile device, two-thirds of portable video users say: "It has been more than a week since they watched something on their portable player."

Even among iTunes users, video playback is still light. Daily playback of audio-only files, for users with iPods, averages 50 minutes and 30 seconds. For video files, that number is two-and-a-half minutes.