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.

Comments

DVR is expensive

[tepples]

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.

Re:What about Amazon Prime?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I have Amazon Prime as well - and Prime Video sucks enough that we don't even look at it anymore.

It's not a question of "catching up" to Netflix or Hulu. Amazon's model is to offer just enough episodes of a particular show where they hope you'll pay additional money to watch the rest of them. This is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems as if every time we tried to watch a series on Amazon, there were only 4-6 episodes which we weren't going to be charged extra for watching.

No thank you, Amazon.