FYI, if you're not on the BARB panel, you're not a true fan.

Excuse!? Who needs an excuse?

The live figure was 555k

It is currently up to 738k

Yog do you have the live figure for Strictly on Saturday?

Same here. I am not away this weekend but will have company on Saturday night and even though I am a big DW fan I doubt we will watch it as our evening won't be revolving around what's on telly. If we do watch it,fair enough but I doubt we will. If that makes me less of a fan than others, fair enough.

It is surprising the amount of Doctor who fans that think if you like DW you can't like sport. Like they are too good to like sport or something?

I always find this bizarre as my two favourites hobbies (obsessions ) are football and Who.

I finish work at ten o'clock at night. Think that is a very good excuse

Still carrying on with this dopey and pointless line of argument?
There's plenty of 'excuses' for not watching the show live, which pretty much everyone else posting on this thread has patiently explained to you. Please give it a rest.

Clearly you have absolutely nothing else in your life so you can plan your whole weekend around a TV show. Good for you.

But I would suggest that most people, including most Doctor Who fans, inhabit and interact with the real world, a world in which family commitments, work commitments, social commitments and many other things sensibly and rightly take precedence, a world in which a TV show is amazingly not the most important thing. Not by a long way.

Now can we get back to clamouring for the head of Moffat on a stick as obviously he must be to blame for lowish overnight ratings caused by real people carrying on with real lives and having the audacity to watch and enjoy Doctor Who when it actually suits them.

People had all of those same commitments in the past but they still made time to watch Dr Who on a Saturday night whereas now they don't.

They don't need to now because there are so many options available to catch up at a time that's more convenient to them.

I feel like this discussion is just going round and round in circles.

Are you saying video recorders have only just been invented?

Video recorders were not as reliable as current catchup methods (they missed the start/end of programmes, failed to record at all, tapes failed on recording or playback for example). It was also more difficult to set up the timers (no EPG).

So do digital recorders very often, even expensive brands.

Next excuse?

Is there a viewing figure update today? I'm very excited about it!

Mass adoption of PVRs, with the ability to record and schedule with ease, is new.

iPlayer is new.

iPlayer on Sky boxes, Xboxes and smart TVs, is new.

Mass adoption of tablets and smartphones is new.

Everybody TV owner in the country having access to a minimum of 30 channels rather than just 5 new.

In fact, the introduction of, and/or rapid explosion in use of, all of these has coincided with a large part Doctor Who's more dedicated audience shifting from 'on the night' to timeshifted viewing.

It's not just Doctor Who. While Doctor Who did lead in this, heavier timeshifting has happened across the board, while overnight ratings have fallen, as indeed have ratings across the board (greater choice has that effect).

It is true that the greater majority of TV viewing happens overnight still, but nonetheless a TV revolution has been happening that has noticeably changed the TV landscape.

Rarely. Most have the ability to adjust for start time changes, and add time to each end of a programme. At least Sky, Virgin and the biggest selling Freeview+ and Freesat+ recorders do. And they remain so easy to use, with high capacities and no faffing.

And no one is offering excuses. There isn't anything to excuse.

I have NO excuse that would be acceptable to ntscuser, but it'll be iplayer after the Rugby on Saturday....I'll be too edgy wondering about the score to enjoy Who. I am a bad, bad fan.

So did VHS recorders!

And check out the hardware forums at Digital Spy if you think digital recorders seldom fail to record programmes properly, especially programmes like Dr Who which have a different start and finish time every week.

I've been lucky with mine but I still watch live in case the recording fails.

I used to set up timer recordings back in the day and it was a pain in the backside and no way compares to the flexibility that we have with today's technology.

I've set my Sky+ box* to record the whole series so that I can watch each episode whenever I like and as many times as I like with ease. I think it took me all of three button pushes on the remote to set that up. It doesn't matter what time each episode is broadcast. I don't even need to remember that because the Sky+box* knows, and it will be available for me next time I am free to watch TV. Not only that but I don't even need to know when they decide to broadcast the next series of Doctor Who, 2016, 2017, it doesn't matter my Sky+ box* will know and again download it for me to watch at my convenience. If by some freak accident the box fails to record any show then I can just download the program from iPlayer and it will be available to start watching in minutes.

I will join Michael_Eve on the naughty step.

*Other PVRs are available from all good retailers while stocks last.

The facts and figures speak for themselves. People adopted PVRs at a far faster rate than they did VCRs, record far more on them than they did with VCRs, and consider PVRs far easier to use. Ease of use always equals greater use, it's a fundamental rule of technology.


You're making the mistake of confusing self-selecting feedback, on forum complaint threads, with how people finding using PVRs generally. A survey just a couple of years back (fairly sure it was from Thinkbox) found satisfaction rates with PVRs usage averaged in the 90% + range.

And you know what you can do if your recording fails? At least the vast majority can? Get it on demand from iPlayer.

Excuse? No "excuse" is needed, especially when valid reasons are given.

I have owned a PVR (well, two simultaneously, one SD and one HD), and I can count the number of failures as being far, far less than failures that I had on my succession of VCRs.

And both are far easier to programme (and hardly ever miss the start/end of programmes due to Accurate Recording) and I don't have to remember any changing times of episodes (something that is common for DW of course).

I've never been able to stand iPlayer for more than a couple of mins at a time. Besides which I didn't pay a television licence to watch streaming video, I paid it to watch television broadcasts.

If the recording fails I'll download TLA or FoV's version along with matching subtitles from addic7ed.com

The quicker iPlayer is shut down the better.

Shut down!? Shut down!? Why on Earth would iPlayer be shut down? Millions of people happily use it every day and the BBC are expanding it's service not contracting it.

I'm genuinely baffled as to why this is SO important to you.

Just about every other poster in this increasingly wearisome argument has pointed out that it really doesn't matter when or how you watch Doctor Who, as there are dozens of ways to watch it, whenever you want to, whenever it's convenient to do so. Yet you seem obsessed with the idea that that not watching it live as it happens somehow makes the viewer a lesser mortal and not worthy of being a fan.

Genuine question - why does this matter to you so much, when it clearly doesn't bother anyone else one bit?