Slashdot Mirror
For the First Time, More US Households Have Netflix Than a DVR (variety.com)
For the first time, U.S. households with the Netflix video-streaming service outnumber those that own a digital video recorder (DVR), a dramatic rise from just five years ago, according to new data. From a report: About 54% of U.S. adults said they have Netflix in their household -- while 53% have a DVR, according to Research Group's annual on-demand study. It's the first time that households with Netflix have surpassed the level of those with a DVR in the history of LRG's studies. In 2011, according to the research firm, 44% of TV households had a DVR and 28% had Netflix. Netflix has now eclipsed DVR usage despite the latter having a years-long head start. TiVo's first digital video recorder shipped in 1999, while Netflix debuted its video-streaming service in 2007 and started the shift away from its DVD-by-mail business. As of the end of 2016, Netflix had 49.4 million streaming subscribers in the U.S., up 10.5% year over year.
How much of this is because TiVo charges $750 for the DVR, comprising $200 for the hardware and $550 for the required program guide subscription? That could buy several years of Netflix.
I *watch* Netflix on my DVR (Tivo)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Netflix: $8 a month
DVR Rental: $12 a month
For us cord cutters - You have to spend hundreds of dollars on them and also have to create an account with the company for marketing reasons. And some also charge an annual fee on top of it.
Fuck'em. Anyway, if there is something I want to binge on, my library has it. I've been bingeing on Game of Thrones at no extra cost.
Go figure.
that's only because cable companies make it so damn hard to hook up a recorder *of your choosing* (ya know, like you used to be able to do with a vcr). and by "hard", i mean literally "impossible" now.
i think that's a bigger detractor to cable and dvr than even the ever-increasing cost of cable tv: encrypted local and basic channels, which obsoleted *everything* without a cable card (which severely limits what you can use and increases the cost) and destroyed what market there was for the "non tivo" dvr
if clearqam was a thing, and cable companies continued to use frequency traps to restrict unsubscribed channels, the stocks and selection of dvr products in stores would be as varied and plentiful as a vcr was before, and they'd be cheap, too.
if you're going to pay $20 a month *extra* for a dvr from the cable company, you might as well cut your losses, dump the cable *and* the dvr, and go with streaming services instead. too bad cable companies still haven't figured that out. they're too busy milking their dwindling subscriber base with yet another rate hike.
Since I already subscribe to Prime, I just stick to that for video content for now. I had a DVR for a while that my cable company snuck into my home (and then began charging me for it later) and I never used it. Hopefully, Amazon begins to catch up with Netflix on number and variety of available titles.
I use the latest Roku box to consume video these days.
And Prime has Doctor Who and a better selection of science fiction movies.
Netflix' sci-fi is mostly B-moive shit and total garbage like Star Trek Nemesis.
Why does it have to be an either/or thing? I prefer both. Content I know I want that is broadcast OTA/TTP (through the pipe!) I'll DVR. Content that I may just be casually browsing I'll look to from a streaming service.
I personally prefer DVR for several reasons: 1) No worry about the internet being available and/or bandwidth caps 2) No visibility by my internet provider on what I'm watching 3) No worried about content licensing expiring and having to switch to a different streaming service.
Streaming is good for casual browsing when there isn't something specific that I want to watch. Back in the old days it seemed like Netflix was the one-stop-shop but nowadays it's become too patchwork and I've become turned off to using Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu/Vudu/Youtube Red or whoever it may be that's hosting my preferred on-demand content at the moment.
My DVR setup - a Windows PC running NextPVR (although I've been wanting to try Linux & MythTV) pulling off OTA and cablecard HDHomeRuns. I use Kodi to play that content to all my screens. It took a little bit of work to set it all up - a few hours - with the biggest challenges being the lack of familiarity with the options at the start.
Never had it, never will. And, as always, fuck Apple.
fast enough to stream video. I know when I worked for GeekSquad in the Seattle area, I saw a lot of dial-up and 1.5 Mbps DSL connections that couldn't. I'd guess about 3/4 of the people I dealt with didn't like my neighbor:
http://imgur.com/WgSvnA5
CenturyLink has the phone monopoly here, and they're testing faster connections on one street. I haven't heard if they're going to allow more of us to have connections fast enough to stream video.
That >50% claim by Netflix is just a load of crap.
They have gone downhill the content flagging bs, all the issues with cable cards, 30 second skip hacks, and generally the runaround. Plex, Netflix, and prime get me all the media I would care to consume and without commercials. Why would people want a DVR today when they are so broken.
No sir I dont like it.
I'm not bragging, nor am I whining: just stating a fact. I don't understand why people need a DVR when every show and its brother is available via OnDemand. NetFlix I could see as a possibility if I were suddenly laid off, deathly ill, and could do nothing but lie on a couch and watch shows.
Since I'm not, I've got a job, books, the cello, tennis, and about a dozen other hobbies, leaving only a few hours a week for screen-eyeball time anyway. (and when the heck is Orphan Black coming on?)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Just kidding MTV hasn't been good since I was a kid.
I dropped Netflix ever since the latest price increase.
My family skipped right over DVRs into straight piracy, and then finally a little Netflix (which allowed us to finally dump cable).
I kinda have the same reaction as if the headline said "For the First Time, More US Households Have Netflix Than a FishTank".
Putting aside that put are (usually) connected to a TV, how exactly are those two related? Especially when one is complementary to the other (and not exclusive).
Elok
They've been doing everything possible to make DVR usage as miserable as possible. Third party DVR's are mostly blocked so you are left with expensive and buggy captive DVRs that you can't take with you if change providers. (So you lose all your existing recordings) Broadcast flags block some shows from being recorded at all. But people don't like commercials or watching on the broadcasters schedule so they dump the whole cable/satellite package and go Netflix.
Of course, the qualify of Netflix's offering continues to decline, so I don't know how permanent this trend is. Further, the trend in recent streaming offerings is services that look remarkably like cable packages. Cost like them too with often with commercials that can't be skipped, a "broadcast" schedule and no DVR.
I pay a bit under 6 bucks a month for my Netflix 2-dvds-a-month subscription. Huge variety, and I don't wind up spending way too much time sitting around watching shows.
When you sign up for Netflix, the price advertised is what you pay.
The American television service companies lie their asses off even worse than the wireless carriers. The advertised price is a fiction, and you usually need at least one long, painful phone call per year to pay in the neighborhood of your advertised price.
Hello Netflix. Good bye Comcast, Dish, DirecTV. (I'd add Verizon and Time Warner to the list, but I can't get them at my house.)
Netflix is a service, while DVRs are service delivery devices. Not only are they not mutually-exclusive, but they can be complimentary. I watched Netflix on my TiVo for years. When I cord-cut, I had to go shopping for a new device for the TV (tried Chromecast, settled on Roku).
Comparing the two directly would be like comparing the number of people with gmail accounts with the number of people who own cable-modems. They are nearly orthogonal things.
"Now I can start railing against people who use DVRs as proponents of piracy, and hanging on to that ancient notion of paying once for something." - Every troll and group think hipster everywhere.
Seriously, every time I see an article like this one, I get more hate from other people who love disregarding other people's opinions as outdated. The idiot masses never cease to amaze me.
Here in NZ we've had TiVo for the last 9 years but we just had an announcement that the company managing the service will cease operations in October. No replacement EPG so both my TiVo boxes will become useless bricks at that time. There are some people looking at getting the S3 box working with locally produced EPG like they did with the S1 boxes personally imported, but it is unlikely that it will work out so I'm here with a couple of DVRs and in 6 months they will stop working. Since I've got Netflix everywhere and I rarely watch FTA TV any more anyway as even with TiVo the adverts are a pain, and all the DVRs I've looked at that aren't TiVo are horrible, I guess I'll not have a DVR from October and I'll watch far less TV as a result.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Well I had Netflix and Amazon Prime. Now I just have Amazon Prime. Netflix is canceled until they can figure out playing politics pisses off their customers.
Old desktop, laptop or even a Raspberry Pi.
No contest.
Glenn.
Capcha...decision
How many households have The Pirate Bay?
I have fast internet, a VPN subscription, and a Bittorrent client. What is this Netflix thing?
HD Homerun + Old hardware + ubuntu + mythtv + $25/year schedules direct. DVR Solved You're welcome, America.