Disney announced a deal today with Cox Communications in which Cox's video-on-demand service will disable its fast-forward forward feature. This will make it impossible for subscribers to skip through ads. Only some shows with be affected by the deal including, four major ABC prime-time series -- Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Lost and Ugly Betty, along with other content on ABC and ESPN.
While this deal does not affect DVR users, execs say this could set a precedent leading to the complete banishment of ad skipping on VODs and DVRs. According to a report on MediaDailyNews, this could affect DVR sales.
"If you start touching the fast-forward button on the DVR, you'd kill the DVR service," says one veteran media industry executive. "And if you did that deal with cable operators, you would have to make the same deal with satellite guys as well."
Question is, if Disney successfully got the fast forward function removed from DVRs, how fast would hackers reinstate it? I guess a week, tops.
