DVR's Can Save You Lots Of Time

When I go home tonight my wife and I are going to watch a basketball game.   We'll also probably watch another program or two. We have a DVR so we'll record the shows in advance and then watch the recorded copy.   This will cut about 33% off our viewing time by allowing us to skip the commercials.  We'll probably skip around 60-90 minutes of commercials tonight by using our DVR.   By allowing you to skip commercials DVRs can be a great time saver.

Lets do some math...
The average American watches 4-5 hours of TV a day.
4 hours per day x 365 days/year = 1460 hours / year
33% commercials per hour x 1460 hours / year = 481.8 hours of commercials / year
With a DVR you could save yourself 481 hours a year by skipping the commercials.   That is about 40 hours a month in saved time.    If you pay a fee of $15 a month to get a DVR and watch an average amount of TV then you're spending 37.5¢ per hour saved.

If I told you that you could have an extra hour of free time today for 37.5¢ would you take that deal?   I assume most people with some cash on hand would take that bargain.

But maybe you only watch a bit of TV, can it still be useful?  Even if you only watch 1 hour of TV a day on average you'd be paying only $1.50 in DVR rental per hour of commercials skipped.

If you enjoy watching a certain amount of television like I do then a DVR can help you get some of your free time back.   Even if you do nothing productive with that freed up time its worth the relatively small cost.  You can use some of that extra time for your other enjoyable pursuits or you can use some of it to make or save some money.



Photo by somegeekintn