A word of advice for budding techno-preneurs – if you’re planning to invent a new technology that can revolutionize the way people watch TV, try not to incur the wrath of Madison Avenue and the world’s multinational marketers by selling your device on the strength of its ability to skip television advertising. Such was the mistake made by firstmover manufacturers of PVR or DVR (personal or digital video recorders), who in attempting to be extremely user-friendly, proved to be ad-unfriendly – and unfriendly to content providers. But viewer-mobility is on the rise, and increasing PVR/DVR and VoD usage is enabling viewers not only to time-shift, but even construct their own TV channels by cherry-picking their favourite content from the daily schedules. Regarding global PVR usage trends, Paul Jackson Chief Engineer NDS Asia Pacific cites statistics from NDS’ experience with two of the largest PVR platforms in the world. In the US, as of end Dec 2006, HD penetration and DirecTV Plus services were 30% of almost 16 million DirecTV subscribers. And with the highest PVR penetration in the world, at around 25% of total subscribers, is Sky+ from BSkyB in the UK.