Audio Video News

Consumer interest in digital video recorders appears to be slowing, according to an August 13 report from Screen Digest magazine.

Put off by the inability to permanently archive recordings made on the machines, consumers have been slow to warm up to the technology, despite the improved picture and sound they provide compared to video cassette recorders. Although DVRs offer random access and the ability to pause live broadcasts, they don't offer consumers any easy way to save their recordings once the machine's hard disk drives are full. VCRs still offer convenience, portability, and universal compatibility - attributes that DVRs may never match, given the entertainment industry's obsession with copy control.

According to Screen Digest, there are approximately 2.3 million DVRs in US homes. That's a tiny fraction of the approximately 98 million American homes equipped with television sets and VCRs. As recently as July 17, research firms such as the Carmel Group were predicting big gains for DVRs, with a projection of 4.8 million DVR users by the end of 2005 and market penetration of 25% by the end of 2008. Screen Digest takes a much more conservative view, predicting 15.3 million American DVRs by 2006, or approximately 14% of the US TV market.

Both predictions are well below overly enthusiastic estimates made when the devices were first introduced in the late 1990s. Those projections, made primarily by boosters of the technology, foresaw 20 million to 50 million DVRs in US homes by 2005. The adoption rate in Europe has been even slower than in the US, with only about 306,000 DVRs in use in European countries. Screen Digest predicts that number will rise to about 5 million by 2006, or about 3% of all TV-equipped European homes.

Stand-alone DVRs may be further hampered by the inclusion of their features in new generations of set-top converter boxes and other video equipment, according to author Arash Atmel. Atmel foresees a limit in market share for standalone DVRs, which, he says, will reach no more than 19% market penetration by 2006.