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TiVo Watches the Super Bowl

Posted by michael on from the watching-us-watching-them dept.

Boone^ writes: "While millions of people were seeing a tremendous football game, TiVo was busy collecting statistics about the Super Bowl viewing habits of its subscribers. Based on a random sampling of 10,000 of the 280,000 subscribers, they found out that Pepsi/Britney was the subject of the most replayed Ad(s), and not surprisingly the play that got the most attention was Vinatieri's game-winning FG."

2 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. A survey FOR the advertisers by sdo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Clearly the whole point of the survey was for them to say "Hey advertisers! Look! This technology is a GOOD thing for you, not a BAD thing."

    Of course, one of the reasons people watch the Superbowl is FOR the ads. I don't think I've ever watched a single ad when fast-forwarding through Battle-Bots.

    -S

    --
    --- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
  2. Before everyone starts protesting... by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't want to hear it if you a) don't have a Tivo and b) haven't looked into what exact data they collect.

    Privacy people tend to get all spazzy on here, and work everyone else up into a tizzy, and in the case of Tivo, its not even remotely warranted.

    This sort of thing is what keeps Tivo going. This is a new market and it takes a long time to start breaking even. I have zero problem with Tivo doing this, if it allows me to continue using their service which, frankly, I can't imagine having to do without.

    Tivo has been a company that from day one has been extremely concerned about privacy rights, and open communication with their users. If you spend any time browsing the Tivo forums at http://www.tivocommunity.com you'll see that not only do they have a powerful support presense, they are very open about what they collect, how its analyzed, and how its sold. People in the underground community independantly verified what they were saying.

    So, basically, everyone relax. Step away from the keyboard, and go unpause Jerry Springer on the Tivo. That's where the real excitement is, not here.