Dish's Auto Hop skips commercials in recorded shows
— -- Love TV but loathe commercials? When satellite TV provider Dish Network introduced its high-definition Hopper DVR at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, it incorporated an aptly named feature, called PrimeTime Anytime, that automatically records and stores prime-time shows from the big four TV networks for eight days.
Today, Dish will announce a potentially controversial — but for most viewers welcome — feature for PrimeTime Anytime that will let you play recorded shows seamlessly without any of the commercials. It's called Auto Hop, and it performed well enough in my tests to make it seem as though commercials were never even part of the mix.
I've been given exclusive early access to try the feature, which does have certain limits.
For starters, Auto Hop works only with your PrimeTime Anytime recordings, defined as all the programs automatically captured on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC from 8 to 11 p.m. ET Monday through Saturday and 7 to 11 p.m. on Sunday. If you record shows on any other channel during prime time or record major network programs during off-hours, you cannot watch ad-free, at least without fast-forwarding or pressing a skip-ahead button on the remote to advance in 30-second intervals (which you could do previously).
Moreover, you have to wait until 1 a.m. ET daily for the Auto Hop feature to take effect. If you choose to watch a favorite show that aired live at, say, 8 p.m., don't expect to watch sans commercials after putting the kids to bed a half-hour later. Dish will market Auto Hop as a "next-day" feature; the company explains that it takes time to process the recordings to eliminate the ads.
Auto Hop doesn't work on local news or sporting events, even those broadcast in prime time on a major network. In the New York City market, the local Fox news at 10 was recorded as part of PrimeTime Anytime. But you could not watch without ads. Same goes for the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) bouts that also aired on Fox.
You'll know if a show can exploit Auto Hop in one of two ways. A kangaroo icon will appear on the poster art for a program in the DVR menu for PrimeTime Anytime. Or when you press play to watch an Auto-Hop-capable program, a window appears asking if you would like to "automatically hop over this event's commercial breaks." Choose no, and you can take in all the commercials as before. But even if you choose yes, you can still go back and watch the commercials next time.
And if you choose Auto Hop but then skip or fast-forward past a commercial break while watching, you lose the ad-free feature during that particular viewing session.
Tech analyst Richard Doherty of The Envisioneering Group, who was briefed on Dish's plans, calls Auto Hop a "huge change for the media industry and a clear indication that the consumer is in control."
It remains to be seen how advertisers and broadcasters will react. Media analyst Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group, who was also briefed, says, "I can't imagine they'll be ecstatic about it." The concept of skipping ads in DVRs — and the controversy that goes with it — dates at least as far back as the ReplayTV in the early 2000s.
Dish's Vivek Khemka believes the company is on sound legal ground, because no commercials are actually deleted from the recorded video signal. He says Dish has just made it easier to bypass commercials than the technology already in use today, such as fast-forward and auto skip.
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