Would you pay to not watch commercials?

Which is why I don't subscribe to Hulu+ -- I won't pay to watch commercials. If they had a commercial-free tier I'd sign up.

talmy said:

Which is why I don't subscribe to Hulu+ -- I won't pay to watch commercials. If they had a commercial-free tier I'd sign up.

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Same for me.

I tried Hulu for a week and because I am so spoiled with Netflix and iTunes, I couldn't handle the few commercials in Hulu and canceled it.

I do not have OTA, Cable TV or Satellite TV. Therefore I have zero commercials to watch!

Personally, in the scenario you describe, I probably would not pay to skip the commercial. (Sitting watching a show, and a commercial pops up with the option to either a.) pay $0.25 to skip the 30-second commercial or b.) wait 30 seconds for the commercial to be over. I would choose b.)


Paying for a commercial-free stream is available through Netflix, but not for current-run shows. So iTunes is my current source of pay-for-no-ads content.

What I would be willing to do is put effort/money into setting up a system so that I can either avoid commercials in the first place or fast-forward past them.

I have OTA, an HD Homerun tuner device, and the EyeTV software on my Mac. EyeTV records the OTA broadcast shows, then auto-exports them to iTunes, making them automatically available to both my Apple TVs. The system effectively acts as a free DVR (free as in no recurring costs, just the initial purchase cost of the software and hardware), and it lets me skip the commercials.

Ventucky said:

I have several Apple TVs and really like them. Between my own media and iTunes and Hulu+, life is pretty good.

As we were watching Hulu+ the other night and the same 2-3 commercials kept repeating themselves, it dawned on me that I would pay to not watch them, if the price was right. Sometimes you are in the middle of the flow of a show, and well, you know.

My questions are:

If an on-screen button was to appear during a commercial to bypass the commercial, would you push it?

How much is this worth to you? I said to my wife last night that I would gladly pay $.25 to skip them, at least during the show we were watching.

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I admit that I have been annoyed by the commercials on Hulu+ and remember early days of Hulu suggesting they would have the "Hulu Plus" commercial free for a subscription yet here we are today with commercials.

My solution in general is simple though not for everyone - I use Netflix streaming and disc rentals, a TiVo 3 lifetime subscription (though that is not without an issue too), Hulu+ for anything missed by chance, and rarely watch live TV via my Cable services. For TiVo, I can fast forward through the commercials which is acceptable. The challenges with Netflix is that their streaming library is limited where my tastes are concerned.

So what is this all coming to - we remain stuck in a world of commercials and limited selection without commercials. If a show is not too timely, I often think it is better to wait until a season is over then I can get the shows commercial free and watch at my own pace. Also, most seasons of shows are less than half the episodes that seasons used to have which means we wait for the next season on and on and on. Really a shame how quality has been shot to H3LL and we get ads rammed down our gullets.

Plenty of people say they will pay "a price" to not watch commercials, but quite often we never find out because it's such a ridiculous price for most stuff.

ESPN costs about $4 per subscriber per month with all the commercials. That's one channel for one month. Now imagine how much you would have to pay for NO commercials. Don't forget that as the price goes up, more and more people would decide to not buy in. So fewer and fewer people keep paying more and more.

HBO is $18/month for about 10 channels that show mostly movies and a few original series per year.

I really don't understand this extreme aversion to commercials. I hate a lot of them on regular TV because so many are annoying and insulting. Am I really supposed to want a crappy beer because some guy has a thing for his horse? But it's all relative.

Netflix is $7.99/month for a bunch of TV shows and movies that are basically a nice selection of older stuff. There's not an abundance of streaming movies from the past year, but there are some.

Hulu Plus is $7.99/month for a ton of recent TV shows and a few movies. Many of these are cable shows, many of them are from broadcast networks. You have a few commercials, but nowhere near the 8 minutes per half hour you would see on network TV. I think maybe it hits 3 or 4 minutes.

All this for $7.99/month without the cost of any DVR hardware or DVR service. My DVR service is $6/month. Don't get me started on the cost of satellite packages.

Would I pay to not watch commercials? Maybe a little bit more. But I'd rather see various, inventive options for me to pay less for stuff I never, ever, ever watch. Does anybody really watch CNN, Fox News AND MSNBC? Not likely. But CNN is available on every package Dish Network offers, Fox News is on most of them, MSNBC takes getting up to the higher tiers. I don't want to have to get into the really expensive stuff just to pick MSNBC and have CNN and Fox News mostly sitting there not getting watched.

Show me how to watch only the channels I want and then I'll start handing over my money to watch fewer commercials. Until then, I'll let these crazy companies pay for ads and then skip right over them.

I would pay for a commercial free service. However, I never watch them anyway. Everything from broadcast TV is timeshifted and I just fast forward through them.

If the price was at a certain level because of that I would rather just buy the content from iTunes and own it ...

I hated Hulu+ when we used it. I cancelled it as soon as my EyeTV/OTA Antenna setup was in place.

I use a user mod of Comskip, called ETVcomskip, to mark commercials as chapter heads for tv shows i've recorded and dumped into iTunes from EyeTV. Works like a champ.

http://code.google.com/p/etv-comski...e=ETVComskip_h264_HD_mods-1.0rc1.zip&can=2&q=

Get the Hulu addon for XBMC and it has an option to remove the commercials, for both Hulu and Hulu Plus.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=121023

Ventucky said:

I have several Apple TVs and really like them. Between my own media and iTunes and Hulu+, life is pretty good.

As we were watching Hulu+ the other night and the same 2-3 commercials kept repeating themselves, it dawned on me that I would pay to not watch them, if the price was right. Sometimes you are in the middle of the flow of a show, and well, you know.

My questions are:

If an on-screen button was to appear during a commercial to bypass the commercial, would you push it?

How much is this worth to you? I said to my wife last night that I would gladly pay $.25 to skip them, at least during the show we were watching.

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That's why I pay for Netflix and not Hulu+.

cdavis11 said:

I hated Hulu+ when we used it. I cancelled it as soon as my EyeTV/OTA Antenna setup was in place.

I use a user mod of Comskip, called ETVcomskip, to mark commercials as chapter heads for tv shows i've recorded and dumped into iTunes from EyeTV. Works like a champ.

http://code.google.com/p/etv-comski...e=ETVComskip_h264_HD_mods-1.0rc1.zip&can=2&q=

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Thanks for the com skip link. I tried etvcomskip over a year ago but it only worked half the time. (Wood work for NBC programming but not CBS programming, for some reason.) what you posted looks like a relatively new release (October 2012). Ill give it a try!

dgalvan123 said:

Thanks for the com skip link. I tried etvcomskip over a year ago but it only worked half the time. (Wood work for NBC programming but not CBS programming, for some reason.) what you posted looks like a relatively new release (October 2012). Ill give it a try!

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Glad to help.

If you take the time to google around and properly tune the comskip.ini file, you can get it to about 85-90% accuracy.

Ventucky said:

I have several Apple TVs and really like them. Between my own media and iTunes and Hulu+, life is pretty good.

As we were watching Hulu+ the other night and the same 2-3 commercials kept repeating themselves, it dawned on me that I would pay to not watch them, if the price was right. Sometimes you are in the middle of the flow of a show, and well, you know.

My questions are:

If an on-screen button was to appear during a commercial to bypass the commercial, would you push it?

How much is this worth to you? I said to my wife last night that I would gladly pay $.25 to skip them, at least during the show we were watching.

Click to expand...

I enjoy being a consumer. Advertising is one way I learn about that products and services are available to me.

Personally I have no issue with commercials and for the two minutes they're on, I can pop to the toilet, check for messages on my phone, grab a drink or whatever.

I would

I would pay extra to remove them..it was the main reason I won't pay for Hulu+. However, I will try the XBMC solution above. If it removes commercials, I may be back on board.

Yes. But would depend on cost.

NO, commercials are bathroom/snack breaks.

We don't have Directv anymore, so our commercials are limited to Hulu plus which is a great time to update my twitter feed! Netflix and Amazon Instant don't have any.

The Hulu commercials don't bother me because when I had a DVR and I FF through the commercials, pass the show, back up, and stuff, it's takes the same amount of time.

JohnLT13 said:

NO, commercials are bathroom/snack breaks.

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You go to the bathroom/get food 8 times an hour?

I doubt I would even watch tv if I couldn't FF commercials. I'd just stick to Netflix and movies. If you watch 10 hours of tv a week, 3.5 hours of those are commercials.

Ventucky said:

I have several Apple TVs and really like them. Between my own media and iTunes and Hulu+, life is pretty good.

As we were watching Hulu+ the other night and the same 2-3 commercials kept repeating themselves, it dawned on me that I would pay to not watch them, if the price was right. Sometimes you are in the middle of the flow of a show, and well, you know.

My questions are:

If an on-screen button was to appear during a commercial to bypass the commercial, would you push it?

How much is this worth to you? I said to my wife last night that I would gladly pay $.25 to skip them, at least during the show we were watching.

Click to expand...

I would be pushing that button each and every time, commercials are intruding my privacy. Perhaps people have got used to them, but when I was a kid, commercial during a movie did not exist. Usually I record stuff so a can skip the commercials by pushing fast forward. Watching Formula 1, I would choose BBC over the commercial stations because BBC lacks the inner program commercials.
I would be willing to pay an extra fee to have TV without those damn commercials. Those commercials have become that long, that during them you forgot what you wee watching in the first place.
And for the US, when I was there and watched a sports program, I just stopped watching it as there was a commercial between each and every sports event break: totally crazy.

StinDaWg said:

You go to the bathroom/get food 8 times an hour?

I doubt I would even watch tv if I couldn't FF commercials. I'd just stick to Netflix and movies. If you watch 10 hours of tv a week, 3.5 hours of those are commercials.

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Well I get up and do something instead of sitting in front of a TV for hours.
I mostly watch movies so I guess I needn't answer.

I don't mind commercials during most programs, in fact, I actually enjoy watching them. But then the ones we get here in Japan are (mostly) fun and interesting to watch. I hear the ones you have over in the new world are rather dreary.

However I don't like commercials during movies, so we have a few premium movie channels that are ad free.

Ventucky said:

How much is this worth to you? I said to my wife last night that I would gladly pay $.25 to skip them, at least during the show we were watching.

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Pay them that $.25 once and they'll never leave you alone. They'll be sending you commercials every 5 minutes as they milk you dry!