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."

Comments

Question

[priestx]

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.

Re:DVD will be the winner in the HiDef War

[CDMA_Demo]

No one will ever use the full capacity of BluRay station wagon.

Re:DVD will be the winner in the HiDef War

[plover]

Are you saying 640K station wagons full of BluRay* discs should be enough for anyone?

You're probably right. At least until holodeck interaction becomes common.

*Firefox's spell checker suggested BluRay should be spelled "blurry". So much for HD.

I will "upgrade" when...

[pla]

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.

But the DVD has is own issues...

[bogaboga]

Much as I love the features of the DVD if paired with an equally capable player, the DVD has its own [ugly] issues. Despite the fact that it's a modern invention, nobody can even come close to guaranteeing that the DVD medium (the disc) can withstand storage for long times.

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.

Re:But the DVD has is own issues...

[eln]

If only there were some sort of portable computer that could fit on one's lap...a "laptop" if you will...that could be carried to remote locations like this. Or perhaps someone could come up with some way to attach an internal device like a hard drive to an external port on a standard PC. Perhaps some sort of enclosure with an external connector. Sort of like what the GP mentioned.

Oh hell, that's all just fantasy anyway. The very idea of such useful technology is absurd.

Re:But the DVD has is own issues...

[plover]

The G.P. was talking about storing material today and retrieving it 20 years from now. A hard drive is actually a very poor solution for archival of material. First, drive technology has advanced dramatically in the last 20 years. It continues to advance dramatically -- compare the commonly produced sizes now to those made just 5 years ago, let alone 20 years.

Electrically, the interfaces have changed, too. You'd be very hard-pressed to find a modern machine that's capable of reading from an old Winchester drive -- the ST-506 interface is dead and buried, and the adapter cards that spoke ST-506 were made only in the era of 8-bit ISA bus machines; you won't find a PCI card that supports them. ATA came along, and has advanced to ATA-6. Now we have SATA, which begs the question of how long PATA will live. Do you want to bet your future retrieval of the data to finding an ancient machine that can read SATA on the 2026 equivalent of eBay?

There are plenty of physical reasons not to use hard drives as an archival medium, too. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find an old Winchester drive that could spin up today after sitting idle for 20 years. Drives manufactured back then suffered from stiction, which was caused by lubricants that sat idle for too long. Do you know what's wrong with the longevity of data on drives manufactured today? I don't. Will today's lubricants still flow freely in 2026? Will the platters, heads and mechanics survive the years uncorroded? Will the electrolytic capacitors still hold a charge? Will the connectors have shifted due to thermal expansion and contraction? Will the magnetic fields of some bits have dissipated due to their proximity to other bits? Will the adhesive holding the media to the platters have broken down?

And Google for "maxtor sucks" if you want to read horror stories of people losing data due to the death of a hard drive.

I'm not saying Super-8 is the way to go, but it's still possible to get the data from it. Will the same be true of floppy discs, ZIP disks, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and all the burnable variants of DVDs including +/-, DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM?

Blue Ray this, HD-DVD that...

[RiotXIX]

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.

Re:where is the DVR adoption?

[jedidiah]

...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.

Re:Maybe there are others like me...

[dattaway]

I used to fix VCR's for the tune of half their value (hey, its business!) and quickly discovered the design is a time bomb. The rubber parts rot, the heads clog, and has a loading mechanism that's a magnet for kids to store stuff in there. Its a matter of time before the population of VCR's drop to zero. It will happen faster than the life of a lithium battery or the charges on an EPROM die out.

10 years from now, 90% of all VCR's will be out of commission. Transfer your tapes to other storage now!

Re:where is the DVR adoption?

[MojoStan]

I'm still perplexed that there's not been faster and more widespread adoption of DVRs. As a technologist, I tend to be friends with the kinds of people who have DVRs, but I still have a hard time impressing on "regular people" how damn wonderful they are.

I'm just speculating, but I think "regular people" might be turned off by the monthly fees/subscriptions required by the most popular DVR solutions. They might be thinking: "I never had to pay $20 per month (with a 1-year commitment) to use a VCR." (Yes, there are cheaper options for longer commitments. This is just an example. But "regular people" have to be convinced of its value first.)

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.

I continually explain that having a good DVR is like having refridgeration -- once you've had it, you don't see how anyone made it this far without it. To that end, my wife and I find it diffucult to watch tv away from home.

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).

Re:Not too surprising

[dosius]

Then what do I do on my DVD recorder with DVD-RW discs?

-uso.