Dish Network Offers DVR That Removes Ads

May 10, 2012 at 2:16 pm PT

Dish Network Corp. released a feature on its digital video recorder Thursday that automatically removes commercials from shows aired by major broadcast networks, threatening to seriously undercut billions of dollars in broadcast television advertising.

The feature, dubbed “Auto Hop,” is an advance on existing ad-skipping features on digital video recorders, which have been widely available for several years from cable and satellite operators. For existing DVRs, consumers have to manually press a fast forward button to speed through the commercial breaks. Timing the fast forward can be difficult and viewers can still see scenes from ads.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Tagged with: advertising, commercials, digital video recorders, Dish Network, DVR, television

About Voices

Along with original content and posts from across the Dow Jones network, this section of AllThingsD includes Must-Reads From Other Websites — pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Six posts from external sites are included here each weekday, but we only run the headlines. We link to the original sites for the rest. These posts are explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that the content comes from other websites, and for clarity’s sake, all outside posts run against a pink background.

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions.