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DVD Player Ownership Surpasses VCR Ownership
An anonymous reader wrote to mention an Ars Technica post stating that, for the first time, more U.S. consumers own a DVD player than own a VCR. The DVD player dropped below $100 quite some time ago, but the third quarter of this year saw the percentage of DVD player ownership reach 81.2. Only 79.2% of consumers now own VCR players, reports Nielsen. From the article: "For all of the talk about the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, both technologies are far, far away from most family rooms. Yes, the two are just now beginning what could be a long battle for entertainment-center supremacy, but keep in mind that the technology that they are vying to replace has only recently gained the upper hand against the previous-generation technology--a decade after first being introduced. Even if Blu-ray or HD DVD unexpectedly routs its opponent from the market in the next two or three years, it will still be several more years before the victorious format supplants the DVD."
Does this count dual-players, such as a DVD-VCR combos? That's all I really use, anyways.
I'm sure if they were to count that, it wouldn't be important, as it would just even off things, but a large percentage of households actually uses both I would suspect.
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
Since VHS is out. They win by default.
Seriously, BluRay and HD won't be common place until 2012 at this rate.
By then, we'll have iPod like devices that could hold more video than a Station wagon full of BlueRay discs.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
...their VCR has died recently, and they haven't bothered to replace it!
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
it will still be several more years before the victorious format supplants the DVD.
I will "upgrade" to the best HD format only when it counts as an actual upgrade - Meaning I can play it, in full resolution, on a Linux box.
Note that I don't include the word "legally" in that condition... A broken-feature-reenabling ripper (like DVD Decrypter used to do for region coding, macrovision, and button lockout) will work just as well as an authorized player.
So, which group will give me what I want first? Sony, Toshiba, or DVD-Jon? The winner takes all.
Can any slashdotter convince me that if I had properly stored important video media on a disc in say 20 years ago, this disc would still be readable now? With proper storage, the video cartridge would still be readable now after that long. This is my beef with DVDs.
DVDs beat the pants off of VCRs in the following areas:
Image quality.
Random access.
Extra features on-media.
VCRs still cling to live mainly because it doesn't cost anything to not throw them away, and because of recording.
Let me know when the number of PVRs outnumbers the number of VCRs. That's when the transition will truly be complete.
Of couse p2p Video on Demand services (as represented by YouTube and BitTorrent piracy networks) probably blows both away in the middle to long run.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I dont think the old metric will make much sense with these new HD players. When released they'll probably be able to play both HD (bluray, hddvd, whahever) and standard DVDs. There will be no reason to keep a stand-alone DVD player. They'll just end up as hand me downs to the kids or collect dust.
After a while the HD players will be cheap enough that it will be smart futureproofing to buy a HD player without a HDtv, in the hopes that your next tv will be HD. Hell, there's no shortage of component out dvd players plugged in with composite cables or through RF converter boxes.
Its the pressed media price and everything else. Thats what finally got me. I found VHS/DVD combos just under $100 and my Best Buy offered almost anything I wanted in my library for $10 (simply watching weekly specials) and around $20 for special things or multi-part stuff. I finally said why not. With blank media prices around a quarter or less and burner prices under $50, I finally made the leap. A perfect DVD storm had approached and it only happened to me last spring. And normally I am not a luddite, my computer and gizmos stay leading edge, but DVD needed to put the whole package together.
Now blu-ray and HD-DVD have a lot of work to do. The pressed media prices seem 5x higher than DVD. The players 10x higher. The burners 10x higher. The media I have no idea. The massive back catalogs may takes years to build. And the copy protection will have to be broken. I bet this all takes more than the 10 years it took for DVD.
And the displays that are the platform for all this hi-def are still not ready for prime time. These impress the street, but us computer users have been running CRTs with these display capabilities for decades and in some ways 720p on an LCD is a step back.
Jeez, give it a rest. I have money, but do you honestly think I'm going to subscribe to another new format for at least 10 years? We aren't all tech-writers. I might just skip this technology fasion trend and go for the one in one or two generations, just like I will with consoles. And even then I'll be content with my DVD library. Just like I am with CD-audio quality and good speakers. And I'm speaking as a tech nerd as well. Uprgrading would simply be burning money, which I don't feel, whether I had the money or not, would be a good idea.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
these stats do not include the half dozen dead cheap dvd players I have sitting in the garage.
I don't care if it is a brand name of not, the cheap crap or the expensive dvd recorder/tuner, they all lasted just a few days longer than the warranty.
I use the computer to play dvds. At least the internal drives are cheap enough to replace when they die.
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
...which is why DVRs are so great.
You're no longer tied to the "Great Glass Gozoonga".
You are infact completely FREED from it.
TV on your own schedule, on your own terms.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I also think most "regular people" underestimate how much television is a part of their life. Many people like to think that television is "not important" enough to pay extra money for what they think is a slightly advanced VCR. In reality, people watch way more television than they think they do. They would probably save lots of time and enjoy their time watching television a heck of a lot more if they used a DVR.
It's not cool to admit tv is this important in our lives (I'm kidding). We should all be getting out and reading more, right?Convincing people to pay an additional subscription to put an extra box near their television, with no new content, is a difficult task. I think free trials might do it. 30-day money-back guarantees (like the one offered by TiVo) still seem like a hassle to the unconvinced. Better competition and lower prices are also needed. The leader, TiVo, is darned expensive unless you commit to a long-term subscription. Windows XP Media Center does not require subscriptions, but not many people hook up PCs to their televisions. Cable/satellite companies can probably push free DVR trials on their customers (integrated into the set top box), but their DVRs are not nearly as usable as TiVo and ReplayTV (last time I checked).
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Then what do I do on my DVD recorder with DVD-RW discs?
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I was in Best Buy a couple of days ago and saw Microsoft's 360 HD-DVD player for $150. Anandtech had given it a favorable review and noted that the player could just as easily be hooked up to PC as an xbox. If you already have a hi def screen with an xbox it seems to be a slam dunk purchase. If you don't have the xbox but you have a sufficiently robust pc, you can either watch hi def on your computer monitor or, if your setup allows it, on your HD screen via your PC.
Lots of folks are hedging as to which format will win out but my impression is that if you can buy a player for $150 that gives you an image that's equivalent to a solution that costs 4 times as much and is unavailable, that gives a huge boost to HD-DVD. I say "equivalent" because the initial side by side reviews don't give either format an edge. Another factor is Netflix - you can rent either format from them so your exposure to risking committing to a dead end format is substantially reduced. When the first players came out at $1,000 not many people bit. Now that you can get one player at $150, it strikes me a lot more people will make the jump and it isn't going to be to Blu-Ray.
it will still be several more years before the victorious format supplants the DVD.
If ever. This particular format war isn't being handled very well, it seems to me. Such conflicts are invariably bad for the consumer in the short run since we have to guess which tech will come out on top and whoever guesses wrong gets his fingers burnt. Why can't they all just get along? PICK ONE! I don't really care which at this point. Is it just that Sony is still smarting from the Betamax fiasco? If it turns out after all this hate and discontent that the consumer doesn't find a use for the next-generation of shiny plastic discs it'll be just too bad. Worse for them, sooner or later China is going to be able to foist their version of a next-gen SPD (Shiny Plastic Disc) on the world. They'd better just get with the program and give the consumer what he and she wants now. Period. Or they may find their own technologies irrelevant.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
My local superstore carries a very generic DVD player for $29.99 regular price and they have gone on sale for $19.99. That is absolutely nuts you can get a player at less then the cost of some DVDs.
Not only are you apparently smoking crack WRT the issue of recording on DVD overall, but there are actually several consumer-level camcorders that record video directly to a mini DVD. In other words, the total steps to get DVD content from the camcorder to a normal DVD player is to record some video, yank out the disc, and slap it into the player. Nice try though. Are you a troll, or are you just living under a rock? You apparently have internet access yet are completely uninformed, that's pretty amazing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
(Yes, I realise I'm ignoring the CSS part of the DRM. That's because for most people it's a non-issue - CSS doesn't stop them from buying discs or players from overseas, taking them with them when they move, etc. In fact, in that respect you get more trouble from voltage and standards issues with players and TVs than you do with CSS. And, in the end, it turned out to be trivial to break - a single player key got out into the wild, and *poof*!)
As for the UOPs - dunno 'bout in the US, but both my cheap Philips and my sister's considerably more expensive Pioneer players bypass most UOPs at the press of a button. In fact, as I've discovered from discs I've made, the only prohibitions they can't beat aren't actual UOPs, but tricky programming. For instance, there's a neat trick you can do where you unset the "back" link at start of play, and don't set the "next" link until right near the end - the fwd/rwd/skip buttons don't work because, as far as the player is aware, there's nothing to skip to!
Somebody willing to pay the Guardians Of The Mouse might have a look and see if they do something similar...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?