Why Americans Don't Buy DVD Recorders

Ant writes "CNET News.com reports on the reasons behind the unpopularity of DVD recorders in the US. The devices, which have seen heavy support in Europe and Asia, fall flat in the United States. The biggest reason is the penetration of Cable television. With cable, the same show can appear on a channel several times. In Europe and Japan, viewers need to grab copies of shows when they can, as it could be some time before the episode is broadcast again. TiVo also took off more rapidly in the States and elsewhere. TiVo is also one of the reasons selling TVs with embedded hard drives in the States remains a challenge."

Comments

What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[elrous0]

The big problem with DVD recorders for me (as an American) is that getting a show off my DVR and into a recorder is a pain in the ass. I have to play it off in realtime and I can't watch anything else while I'm doing it, since it all has to be done manaully.

There was a time for me when this was much different. I used to have a Humax Tivo/DVD-recorder combo unit that let me burn off shows from my Tivo to DVD-R at faster than real time and still watch other stuff while I did it (it burned in the background). But, thanks to the paranoia of the studios/networks/cable-companies and the DRM-laden standards for digital cable and HDTV, there is now no such combo unit made that can take a cablecard or record HD programs (sadly, I had to abandon my old Humax when I got digital cable a while back).

Thanks MPAA, cable companies, and networks!

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[gnick]

You just need a better DVR. For a couple of hundred bucks + a couple of hours of effort, I revamped an old PC into a DVR with BeyondTV (I know - MythTV is free and you don't need Windows, but that's the way I went.) No subscription fees and HD if your tuner card supports it. And, if I want to burn something, I throw a blank DVD-R into the DVD drive and burn.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[elrous0]

Will it take a cablecard from my cable company? If the answer is "no," then it's absolutely worthless to me.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[Sancho]

I was tempted by DVD recorders many times. The main reasons I never took the plunge are:
- Too expensive. I kept waiting for the prices to drop, and they never did. When I stopped caring, they were just under $1,000.
- Low recording capacity. I think the blanks are good for 2 hours. It may vary based upon quality, but quality matters--I'd rather have VHS than low-quality digital.
- TiVo hacking. Eventually, I got a TiVo, and could extract shows on my own, and burn them to (slightly out-of-spec) DVD.

I finally got rid of the TiVo when I got satellite, but now don't care so much about archiving. My DVR gets the shows, I watch them, then I delete them. I came to realize that most of the stuff that I wanted more-permanent copies of, I rarely watched again, anyway.

So the truth is, for me, a DVR is all I want. Swapping DVD blanks and low recording times make the solution completely unacceptable at this point, even if they came down in price significantly.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything this commenter says is also applicable to the High Def Recorder. Combining a TV tuner and a hard drive is not technically difficult. Yet, you cannot buy an off the air HD DVR unless it is a Sat TV or Cable co rental box. The short answer is that "they" don't want you to be able to cache programming in any way "they" don't absolutely control. Witness the move for "video on demand" which is really a remote cache of programming delivered to your house by their servers.

I hope someone comes out with a new HD DVR by 2009, as my Sony gets it's time stamp from analog programming signals, and I really don't want to pay a rental fee for a new unit.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Korea, "down under", and much of Europe, there are not only DVR's, but HD DVR's that BURN TO BLU RAY.....Why can't I buy one of those ???? I have money, and there are thousands, possibly millions of me out there.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't decode what's coming in off of my satellite either Anyone who can afford their own satellite can surely afford to have somebody else build them a DVR.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[ardent99]

I have a wonderful Panasonic device I bought last year. It is a combination DVR/VCR/DVD recorder, with TV Guide Online. It is one of the best purchases I ever made. The integration of the functions is great. I can select a program in the TV guide mode, and with a click or two of the remote tell it to record that show to the hard disk when it comes on. Most of the time I don't need to get it off the hard disk, so I just delete it when I'm done. But occasionally, like for a good movie, I can edit out the commercials, and then copy it to a DVD in high-speed copy mode, and voila, there's my archive copy. It also supports recording one show while playing back a different one, or chasing playback where it plays the same show that is being recorded ahead. It's a perfect example of well-designed integration of functions, and got me to replace the stack of components I had before. Even my girlfriend, who tends to rail on bad technology design every chance she gets, fell in love with it.

Anyway, Panasonic discontinued this model, and hasn't replaced it with a new one with the same capabilities. I suspect it has to do with pressure from the movie industry; I saw a rumor to that effect somewhere online, but I don't know for sure. I can't imagine Panasonic did it voluntarily, because during the time it was on the market (2006-2007) it was a hot seller. I guess I got lucky buying it in the window of opportunity.

So I suspect there would be a lot more variety of video gadgets, and a lot more familiarity and interest in them among Americans, if the movie industry weren't allowed to strong arm the electronics market. I think if you looked at the economics of it, they are single-handedly responsible for depressing a big segment of the economy.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[Otto]

Yet, you cannot buy an off the air HD DVR unless it is a Sat TV or Cable co rental box. The TivoHD will record OTA HD directly. You do have to pay the Tivo monthly fee for the guide data and such, however. Or buy the lifetime service.

Admittedly, it's aimed at Cable customers with it's CableCard support. But it will record over-the-air HD channels as well.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[trolltalk.com]

LG LRA-850 - $99.00 just before christmas, so I bought 3.

Easy to use:

1. stick blank dvd in (I use rewriteables)
2. asks if you want to initialize disk - hit "ok"
3. show starts - hit record button
4. show's over - hit eject

Wait a minute while it creates the menus and finalizes the disc, and you're done.

As a bonus, it also plays divx files just fine.

Re:What DVD recorders COULD be, but aren't

[yuna49]

I have an LG DVDR/VCR combo unit, and like it quite a bit as well. I bought it primarily to dub old VHS recordings onto DVD, but I use it for off-air recordings as well. It even supports the S-VHS format, which a few of my tapes were in. Using the DVD recorder produces quite acceptable quality even at the 6-hour speed, especially for live programs like sporting events. Unless I want to archive something, I use DVD+RW disks and just write over them. As fewer amd fewer people have VCRs, it's nice to be able to share a program with a friend using standard-format DVDs.

Being able to play DivX/XviD files was another big plus for me since I watch fansubbed anime. I would write the files to a DVD on my computer, then play them on my TV using the LG. Even in the current generation of upscaling DVD players, there are manufacturers who still don't support DivX playback, notably Sony. I bought a Sony upscaling player and immediately exchanged it for a Panasonic S53 when I discovered the Sony wouldn't play DivX. However, the value of DivX playback has faded somewhat since I bought an HDTV and connected a computer to it directly. This method has the additional advantage over the DVD player of letting me play shows in the Matroska or standard (non-DivX) MPEG4 containers.

My positive experiences with this device made me wonder about the initial topic.

Eh?

[Malevolent Tester]

In Europe and Japan, viewers need to grab copies of shows when they can, as it could be some time before the episode is broadcast again

The author must be watching a different BBC to the one I get.

Isn't that reasoning contradictory?

[joeflies]

1) TV shows are broadcasted frequently in the US, so no need for DVD recording devices

2) Tivo is a recording device that is popular in the US

It seems to me that the "broadcasted frequently" isn't a valid reason for why DVD recording devices aren't popular, because there are recording devices that are popular.

Re:Isn't that reasoning contradictory?

[immcintosh]

As an addendum to my previous thought, perhaps this says something about the disposability of American television programming. It's just not worth the plastic to burn it on :P

TVs with hard drives

[Grishnakh]

This is just a stupid idea, just like the old TVs combined with VCRs which became obsolete when DVDs came out. It's much better to just buy a standalone TV/monitor, and separate DVD player, TiVo, etc. and connect them together. Otherwise you get a mediocre device which does many things poorly, at a high price.

The real reason....

[MarkGriz]

is we're all a bunch of stealing illegal file downloading copyright infringing pirates.

Just ask the MPAA.

My reasons

[Dan East]

For us, initially the cost of the hardware and media was too much compared to the good old VCR.
Later, our DVR pretty much made it pointless.
Most recently, the ability to watch TV shows off the internet on-demand, or to obtain them via BitTorrent, has almost supplanted the DVR completely.

Dan East

Where to plug it in?

[dazedNconfuzed]

In considering getting an HDTV, my wife casually asked about recording shows. Aghast, I had to admit I wasn't sure how that could be done! In the HDMI world - as the cartels intended - there just is no place to plug in a recorder, and DVRs don't come with disc writers. Yeah, I could hack up something involving a PC, HD tuner card, ill-supported software, bittorrent, etc. but it just would never meet the "insert blank, choose channel, hit 'Record'" it-just-works paradigm.

Because HDD recorders are better

[Sycraft-fu]

DVD seems like a large medium when you are storing something like old documents, but it really isn't when you are talking video. I mean think: A DVD only holds a few hours of video when you get one for a movie. Even if you are willing to lower the quality, you aren't going to get much more than 6 hours out of a DVD, storing in DVD Video format.

Well thats crap, frankly. That equals lots of switching of discs and having to keep a large library. Better to just keep everything on a hard disk. That way when I want a show, it is right there. You can store a whole lot more, since they are larger, and it is all instant access and rewritable.

Finally, you get better quality with digital cable. I've never seen a DVD recorder that does TV tuning as well. That means the signal needs to be decompressed, sent to the recorder, then recompressed. However with a DVR it is a TV tuner and HD recorder. That means it just tunes in the cable signal, and stores the compressed information on the disk, no recompress.

It is just a technology that isn't that useful, given what else is out there.

Re:From the Intro....

[Anonymous Coward]

What alternate universe are you watching TV in? South Park is only aired like once or twice a day, and it's Nickelodeon that shows Spongebob.

Bigger problem

[Moryath]

In the US, consumers were stuck with substandard, feature-stripped DVD recorders.

-Media problems
Nothing would work with the next generation of media (I was given as a "gift" a co-worker's old one that takes 1X and nothing but 1X... the "replacement" took nothing but 4X, wouldn't even work with the legacy 1X disks she had left over). Companies like Philips were shit-poor about issuing firmware updates to use current media, instead trying to forced-obsolete their products and force people to shell out $700-800 to replace a 1-2 year old burner.

-Lack of hard drives and smart burning
Not till the 4th generation did they include a hard drive to remove commercials before the data was burned, meaning if you record 2 hours of show you just recorded 40 minutes of wasted space. Trying to archive was a disaster with that going on.

-Lack of ability to access cable
In order to screw people further, cable companies started altering the phase of their signal to work with only proprietary set-top boxes (my ATi All-In-Wonder got screwed by this too, thank you Time Warner and Comcrap for making my purchase worthless). Want a DVR or recording? Better get their one that's built to be able to handle the phase-shifted signals... and is "rented" to you. Digital cable's even worse, because few if any DVD recorders recognize it, making you try to do a set-top box pass-through (same issue if you have satellite) to set the channel or else pray it has codes for its remote-interceptor dongle to do the channel changing work.

Chances of getting a DVD burner unit cable of receiving component video or HD-quality? GOOD LUCK. The market's now been abandoned. If you want to do it, you build your own MythTV box or something.

Re:Bigger problem

[Ash Vince]

I think there is another reason why DVD burners are more popular in Europe which nobody seems to have mentioned yet:

DVD's cost more here.

If you in the states want to watch a film that is not likely to be broadcast on TV due to it niche market you can just buy it on DVD for $10 or so. Over here that same DVD would be about £10. Now since the dollar to pound exchange rate is currently about $2 = £1 we effectively pay close to double the price for prerecorded DVDs. That is a real incentive to record any film you might want to watch in future and then keep the disk.

A DVR is all very well but however big the disk in it it will eventually be full and you have to start deleting stuff to make room. At that point you may only be able to watch it again in a few years by paying a fair old wodge of cash.

The other issue is that this is probably a lot less appealing to people in the states due to the adverts every 10 mins. Who wants to have a permanent copy of your favourite film that has so many interruptions. Over here in Europe (well in Britain anyway) we have TV channels with no advert brakes. We also have less advert brakes in general even on the channels that do show advertising. This makes the idea of keeping a permanent copy of something you tape a lot more appealing.

With all this in mind though, I would rather live in the US and simply pay less to buy prerecorded DVDs. Then I would not mind using a DVR as a temporary storage medium for stuff I had not got around to watching yet and deleting it when I did.

Re:Bigger problem

[badasscat]

Umm, I don't know about that. I just got back from being in Israel for 2 weeks and although its not Europe, DVD prices were about the same as the US (price fixing is suspect though). I saw new movies for about 20$ US (80 NIS) if bought from legitimate stores and not bootlegged.

In Japan, one of the territories mentioned in the original post, DVD's are usually around $50 and *up*. So yes, this is a major consideration there.

People in Japan can take their HDD/DVD recorder, record a high-def broadcast of a Hollywood film onto their hard drives, then re-record that onto DVD. In the process, while they obviously won't get an HD-DVD out of it, they'll usually get a DVD that's at least as good in quality as the "official" release. No, it won't have official artwork or a jewel case or anything, but I imagine most people would consider the cost tradeoff worth it.

I guess the moral of the story is DVD recorders are just more *necessary* in certain territories than they are in the US. Most DVD's these days in the US are $10 or less. Even Blu-Ray discs list at $25 and can be found almost everywhere for less than that. And when you add in the free or very cheap DVR's given out by the cable companies, we just really have very little need for DVD recorders here.

Oh, one other thing - the PC is bigger in the US than it is in Japan. If people *really* want to record DVD's in the US, they'll often just do it on PC. That's less common in Japan, where a hell of a lot of people have a cell phone as their only computer, or at most a mini-laptop without an optical drive. (I'm not saying real computers with DVD recorders don't exist, just that there are fewer of them in use than here.)

DRM again...

[evilviper]

Why in the world would anyone get a crippled stand-alone DVD recorder? You have to put up with macrovision, and digital tokens preventing recording from DVDs or VHS tapes, and even sometimes digital cable/satellite tuners.

You have to record in real-time, at low quality, and that's if you or an installer can even figure out how to get the wiring right... Most satellite installers can't figure out how to keep a single VCR in the loop, let alone VCR+DVD+DVDR+DVR.

Meanwhile, if you put a TV tuner and DVD-Burner in your computer, you can (trivially) edit out commercials, decide after the fact whether or not it's worth wasting a disc on the show... You can make backup DVD copies at 16X. You can back-up data from your computer. You can record high-def video to disc. etc., etc.

The story here is that Americans aren't stupid enough to buy DRM crippled, expensive, and inherently limited, stand-alone DVD recorders.

Re:DRM again...

[moderatorrater]

You just called Americans smarter than Europeans and got marked +5 Insightful. Are you God?

Re:DRM again...

[evilviper]

You just called Americans smarter than Europeans and got marked +5 Insightful. Are you God?

Of course. I am American after all...

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

Re:DRM again...

[Zoxed]

> You just called Americans smarter than Europeans and got marked +5 Insightful. Are you God?

Probably not: just shows there are more Americans with mod points than Europeans !!

torrents are easier

[VMaN]

Drop .torrent file in torrent directory on server. torrent takes care of the rest, while providing a nice web interface front end if needed even my gf can use, and playback using XBMC directly on the TV.

Now all we need it xbmc for linux to mature so i can playback 1080p with some better/faster hardware.

And as a bonus I have all seasons of all shows I've watched at my fingertips.

How about a bullited list?

[ProppaT]

* - (most affordable) DVD recorders don't record HDTV
* - (most affordable) DVD recorders don't record or tune digital cable
* - (most affordable) DVD recorders have really really crappy image quality, due partially to the fact that they don't tune the digital signal and also due to the fact that they just suck
* - (most affordable) DVD recorders do not have an in-depth recording menu like DVR's do. There's none of that searching for programs, record every instance of a program, "only record first run" options, etc.
* - (most) People don't like a bunch of discs laying around when it can be held in the device and, as an ancillary, most people don't want to have to remember to "load up the dvd recorder" before they go to work
* - (many) People just download tv programs off the internet if they want to keep a copy of the show
* - US major broadcasting stations have really, really good online sites that let you watch the shows (many times in HD) on your computer
* - DVD's just don't hold much data, whereas I have stuff on my DVR dated back to October at this point
* - Many DVR's from cable companies are easy to hook portable hard drives up to...
* - Many American's have the mentality that paying a little each month (to rent a dvr) is better than paying one lump sum up front (for a dvd recorder), especially when the DVR gives you the benefits previously mentioned.

Of course, I'm sure that DVD recorder technology in the US is severely lagging behind the rest of the world because DVR is preferred here (and, on the same note, I'm sure our DVR's blow the rest of the worlds out of the water), but until we see Blue Ray DVD Recorders that record HD programs and can store massive amounts of data AND until we see Blue Ray discs get cheap enough to make this a viable option, DVR's really the only solution for me.

Anyone who wants, feel free to add to the list. This was just off the top of my head...

Re:The Real Reason

[Beardo the Bearded]

Not at all.

I bought a Daytek HDD recorder from Costco. I plug in cable and power and attach it to my TV. I then set up the recording sequence just like a VCR. It records the shows I want it to. I've noted one exception with a broadcast flag (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, wtf?), but other than that it works almost perfectly. I've currently got about 65 hours recorded that I've got to watch.

It also plays DivX or VixD disks. I got the Torchwood finale off Limewire (stupid CBC shifted it, and only announced it ONCE during the previous show, which we watched off "tape".) and it played with no problems.

I can watch a recorded show or a DVD while it's recording.

I can burn disks off the shows recorded onto the HDD.

I have no idea what or where the original poster bought. Apparently it's crap.

Buggiest peices of sh

[Tmack]

If most are like the Panasonic one Im about to return, then its simply because these have to be the buggiest, slowest crappiest devices ever sold. I got a DMR-EZ47V, which is a Panasonic DVD recorder/VCR/Digital Tuner. Well, I got it mainly for the digital tuner and dvd player, since analog reception at my house sucks (digital actually gives me MORE channels) and I have no other digital tuner, my DVD player is old and locks up from overheating half way through a disc, and my VCR is ancient and I want to piss off the MPAA and actually convert the tapes to disc rather than buy more DVDs.

Well, it would all be great, if it actually worked. First, it takes a good 30-45 seconds just to power on, unless you set it to "quick power up", which is basically having it ON but not on (draws something like only 100ma less than full poweron vs ~14ma draw if its completely off). Thats before ANY screen comes up or it allows you to do anything with it. IF you happen to have a DVD in it when you turn it on, it automagically plays the disc. No, theres no menu option to turn off autoplay, and thanks to the feature of not allowing you to skip through an FBI/copyright warning message you cant stop it until it gets to the DVD's main menu, tacking on another minute or so to the boot of the damned thing (pressing stop does nothing but display the red hand indicating you cant do that, and eject wont work either, until fully powered on and not on one of those screens).

Once it finally boots, you have to press the tv/vcr button to actually view its output via the RF inverter (chan3/4), or turn on your stereo to get the picture via RCA jack (unless you have hdmi, which I dont, but that probably has its own issues), UNLESS you had a disc in the drive, then it will have already changed modes for you. Changing channels takes a good 2 seconds each, and if you flip more than one at a time, you risk getting the channel display out of sync with the actual channel its displaying. Also, the channel info display that shows what program is on/next stops working after a couple minutes of use. The longer you leave it on, the slower it gets (memory leak?), and it can take 5+ seconds to respond to a button press on the remote (ie: you push channel up and wait, and a few seconds later it changes. If you push it again while waiting, it changes several channels). It has a tendency to lock up at a black screen while the unit itself displays "U99", which the manual says is "Error, power off/on to reset unit". Which brings up the unit's display itself.... it displays the clock, only while off. When on, it only displays the status of the drive, or an error message, and you cant change it to be informative at all, there is no option to show what channel its on or to have it just display the clock, while watching TV, it always displays "STOP".

So, it has a DVD recorder as well. Well, it would be nice if it ACTUALLY RECORDED A PROGRAM! But thanks to DRM and broadcast flags (in this case, copyright flags of some sort, or just another bug), you schedule a recording, set it up like the manual says (ie: set the shows time, duration, channel and recording quality, put in a blank disc, and power it off), verify that its set right by seeing the red recording indicator thingy, and come back later to find that the scheduled event has passed, but the damn thing didnt do anything. No explination, it just shows up as an event in the past that you can no longer change, and you have a blank DVD still in the drive. WTF. It also claims to play "DivX" encoded movies, but whats funny is the cheapass 4 year old player Im replacing with it could play alot more of the formats than this thing can, and when this one tries to actually play DivX, it over heats and locks up only a quarter through the movie, after starting to drop frames and cause massive pixelation.

I bitched to Panasonic about it, they shipped me a Firmware update disc, which made it respond a bit faster to remote control presses, and reduced the number of lockups, but the thing still locks up, ge

Re:Buggiest peices of sh

[MythMoth]

I should have, but too lazy. It's barely usable and it was cheap. Bad enough to ruin the brand, good enough not to be worth returning.

That's one of the problems big companies have; they might not find out how much damage a product has done until they fail to make the next sale. And that's invisible.

Also, it's technically difficult.

[maillemaker]

I bought a DVD burner for my PC. I also bought a TV tuner card for my PC. My plan was to watch episodes of Battlestar Galatcia on cable, piped into my PC, record it, edit out the commercials, and then burn it to a DVD to watch later.

Not only did the burning take a long time, but I never got DVDs that reliably played in either of the 2 DVD players we had at the time. They would play for about 2 minutes, then the video would pixellate while the audio kept going for a few minutes, and then it would stop.

After dinking around on the support forums for a while I was told that burning DVDs was a black art, not to burn at the full rated speed of the drive, yadda yadda yadda.

Eventually I gave up. It was easier and much faster to just save the raw video file on a hard drive, and go buy a 500GB hard drive to store all my video on. Now I watch all videos off of my hard drive. Burning to DVD was time consuming, tedious, and unreliable.

Recorders were always a niche use in the USA

[Otto]

Video recorders were always a niche use in the USA. Think back to the VCR days. What was the main use of recorders, other than copying movies to build a movie collection?

Most of it was Video Rental. Playback. It was the only reason most people got VCRs. The fact that the box could also record was unimportant. From a tape perspective, a playback only unit didn't make any sense anyway, the hardware would play or record without any real cost difference.

The few who did know how to program their VCR's used it to record broadcast television. And almost all of that was not archival, it was one-time-use. They'd record it because they wanted to see it later. They didn't want to see it over and over again. Oh, sure, they recorded some things for the kids to watch continously, but really, once you've seen most programs once, that's enough.

Nobody really used consumer VCR's to make archives of video material. Sure, they copied movies and kept them around a while, but eventually a lot of people recorded over even these. Who has stacks of video tapes anymore? Did they move their material to DVD's? Home movies sure, but most of it just got trashed.

DVD Recorders did not take off because of all of these reasons.

a) DVD Recorders cost more than DVD players because of different hardware requirements. And most people wanted them for rental only.

b) Tivo and other hard drive based recorders filled the rest of the niche, because a Tivo is like a big programmable VCR, only you never need to change tapes.

c) The only reason left is archival, and people here simply don't archive video material. They don't really want to create their own long term storage except for their own home made materials. If they do, then they're perfectly willing to buy a high quality copy on DVD that they can keep for a long time.

The market isn't there for DVD Video Recorders simply because it doesn't fit the use cases of people who want to record video as well as other solutions do.

Re:The Real Reason

[Original Replica]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, wtf?

Dude, ATHF is a well know terrorist organization. It is unamerican of you to support them through your viewership. Every time you watch that show it is an insult to the hard working patriots in the Department of Homeland Security.


good job.

Yes, probably.

[GameboyRMH]

Not only that, he said that the Average Joe American has some trace of intelligence, and he hasn't even lost the customary 1 mod point you lose for having your post's moderation questioned. Plus his name is evilviper. So yes, probably.

An idea for electronics manufacturers

[hakr89]

A better design for DVD recorders would be a hybrid model. You first record the program onto a hard drive. Then the user can set to copy the program from the hard drive to the disc. Higher end models could feature editing and commercial flagging (for manually editing out the commercials) functions. This would make it possible for the user to decide whether or not to save the program to a disc, increases the quality of said copy, and the point to sell to QC is that it would make disc burning errors less likely since the drive doesn't have to burn at real time, and if the burn does fail, you can just pop another disc in and try again without losing what was already recorded.