Noel Marcantel loves to catch his favorite shows like “The Office” and “Burn Notice,” but a full course load and homework assignments make Marcantel one of the many students turning to digital video recording to catch those shows.”With taking 18 hours and having to do military stuff or intramural sports in the afternoon, I always seem to be busy during prime time,” the history junior said. “I don’t have the time to sit around and catch the shows.”Ann Ruble, public affairs manager for Cox Louisiana, said DVR subscriptions have significantly increased during the last four years.INCREASING POPULARITYCox Communications has 500,000 customers across 17 south Louisiana parishes including the metropolitan areas of Baton Rouge, Lafayette and New Orleans, Ruble said.The percentage of Cox-subscribing households with at least one DVR in Louisiana nearly doubled from 2005 to 2006, increasing from 7 percent to 13 percent, Ruble said. Twenty-five percent of subscribers have at least one DVR, she said.DVR unit sales are also increasing nationally, according to a report by the Consumer Electronics Association. Unit sales increased from 3,225 in 2003 to 16,796 in 2008. Another study by the CEA projects up to 45 percent of households to have a DVR by 2011.DVR units allow users to record live television programs and rewind and fast-forward the content as they choose. And students take advantage of the convenience to catch their favorite shows. “I watch ‘Gossip Girl’ with all my roommates,” said Danielle Wold, environmental engineering sophomore. “We try to make dinner and watch it every week, but when I’m busy with school, I usually just DVR it or catch it on the Internet.”STREAMING CONTENTStudents are also watching streaming content on either TV network Web sites or sites like Hulu or YouTube.”I take 18 hours, so it’s tough to catch my shows when they air,” said Shane Broussard, math senior. “I just use it to catch three or four shows like ‘Psych,’ ‘Monk’ and ‘House.'”Dan Rice, marketing professor, said networks generate most of their advertising revenue through prime-time television ads but have no problem supplementing their revenue with online ads.”Presumably, most of the marketing money is made on TV during the first showing, but putting the show on other venues allows more royalties and more viewership numbers to back up your high prices for new episode advertising on TV,” he said. “It’s unlikely that networks lose money with extra postings and likely gain royalties — it’s more of a supplemental profit issue, not an either/or type choice at this point.”Based on the television time slot or the Web site in which an advertisement is featured, it could reach a variety of consumers, Rice said. And it’s unclear which medium reaches its intended demographic better.”The number of viewers that you reach with a prime-time TV ad is undoubtedly many times larger than an Internet ad,” Rice said. “However, the level of engagement for an ad on the Internet in the middle of streaming video might be higher, and your ability to segment who sees which ads is likely higher as well.”Similar to DVR, students are taking advantage of streaming shows online at their convenience.”I watch news and sitcoms online, but mostly on Hulu,” said Shannon Geoghagan, history senior. “We’ll have people over and stream ‘The Office’ whenever we want. We make a party of it.”LEGAL ISSUESDVR doesn’t violate any copyright laws because DVR only enables users to fast-forward through commercials rather than completely delete them, said Craig Freeman, media law professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication.”As long as you don’t add technology that allows you to slip past commercials, it doesn’t violate copyrights,” Freeman said. “As long as you are keeping the commercials, it’s tough to say TiVo owes [advertisers] money.”But someone could face copyright violations if he downloaded a show without permission and posted it online, said John Church, a law professor at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center.Networks have two separate rights over their content, Church said. Someone would face two separate violations in court by downloading and broadcasting the content, respectively.”A student, or anyone really, broadcasts shows without permission could be in a lot of trouble,” Church said. “You might see awards [to the cable networks] as low as a few thousand dollars to as hefty as those seen in the file-sharing cases.”- – – – Contact Ben Bourgeois at [email protected]