I’m surprised, though, at the comments here claiming that ‘computer viewing’ being common is far off. I see people here using the terms ‘TV’ and ‘monitor’ differently, but from my point of view they have been the same device for several years…basically since the HDMI connection became common. Thinking about it, I can only come up with 2 remaining properties that differentiate the two devices: TVs usually come with speakers and an NTSC or ATSC tuner, whereas monitors generally have neither. I haven’t used the internal speakers on a TV for at least 10 years, and frankly I am surprised that they still exist given how bad they usually sound and how often multichannel soundtracks are used. And regarding the tuner, most people probably use an external tuner of some sort. My point to all this is that the claims that ‘computer viewing’ entails watching on a small screen are silly. I’ve been ‘watching TV’ on monitors with computers connected to them for over 10 years now. It required some technical acumen in the late 90s, but today it’s trivial. I suspect that the majority of people under age 35 will share this view.

Cable and satellite companies certainly know some viewing metrics, like which channels were viewed and for how long, how much DVRs were used, but they do not know which members of the household were doing the viewing. None of the numbers on our site, nor any you are likely to see publicly, come directly from the cable or satco’s.

I watch some shows on the tv but some shows on the computer. I will sneak in an episode of something while at work for example. I sit at my computer at home more than i do in front of the tv. I have a tv show running in a corner through internet explorer while I’m msning to someone or surfing the net in another window.

If i’m around when my show is on and i get a good connection on my tv then i’ll watch it there. Though i’m annoyed by ads and actually prefer to watch it later. I also have my computer hooked up to the tv through an hdmi cable and will watch dvd movies from there. I don’t even own a dvd player, i use it through my pc. I also play all my music through my pc and don’t own a stereo.

Probably more households have a computer and internet connection than a dvr system. Also, in a household it is starting to become more common for each person to have their own computer while still only have one major entertainment centre that has DVR capabilities. Online/TV viewing allows a lot more flexibility already and is pretty cheap. I don’t need to be comfy to catch just the hour or so of tv shows that i might watch in a day. Actually there are probably only 4 or 5 shows that i make an effort to watch, though when i’m bored i don’t sit down in front of the tv (i don’t even have cable so have limited channels) but sit in front of my computer surf around for something to watch/read/play/talk to a friend etc. You can’t really do all that in front of a tv.

More so than the ease of availability of online viewing, comfort is what determines where a person watches television. I’ve been using whatever online means are available as soon as they have become available for years and years, but I still have never watched a show online unless I didn’t have it on the DVR. Even before episodes were available online, I’d download them via newsgroups and torrents, but I’d always then burn the episodes onto video CDs (later DVDs) to watch them on my big screen while sitting in my La-Z-Boy. Once DVRs came about, I stopped watching online altogether. Even now, it’s 50/50 whether I will watch an episode online or download and burn it if I forget to set the DVR.

Let’s think this through:

1. Until 40+ inch computer moniters are available AND affordable, it’s not going to happen.

2. Once #1 happens, then it will take people rearranging how they use their computers, meaning that your office setup will need be such that you have your mouse, keyboard and chair set up 5-7 feet from your 40+ inch computer screen. Who has the room to do that?

Wait, you’d also need your CPU set up next to you, otherwise you’d need to walk across the room every time you wanted to use the CD player, or everytime your CPU locks up and you need to manually reboot (which means sixteen times a day for Vista users).

3. Until comptuers and giant televisions are completely integrated and totally wireless (meaning your living room becomes your computer room, too), this is not happening. And even then it likely won’t happen, because in most households people are not going to give up the TV so someone can play Solitaire or chat on MySpace all night long.

The technological revolution has come fast and furious, but all the major advances in the past decade are mostly speed and software related. The type of major leap Pollock is talking about in hardware is decades away. Not just because the technology needs to be developed in an affordable manner, but also because companies are designed to milk each drop of honey they can out of each new hardware advance. So even if all the advances needed came about by next Tuesday, the companies that manufacture and sell these items would release them in dribs and drabs over many, many years.

Bill has it right on the money. Pollock’s words are mainly spin combined with heaping doses of self denial.

So, the reason for the relatively low numbers for L&O are easily explained in that it had only run 2 episodes this season through Nov 16 and so those DVR numbers above are all “Live+SD” for it and no Live+7 at all.