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Americans Embracing
Digital Video Recorders

U.S. television viewers increasingly adopting the digital video recorder (DVR) as a replacement for the tape-based VCR.

by Judah Ken Freed,
"America Watch" columnist in Euromedia
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American TV viewers are thowing away their VCR cassette tape machines. They've found something better.

The hard-disk DVR technology, also called a personal video recorder (PVR), is being deployed in the set-top boxes of cable and satellite operators, plus appearing in stores as a stand-alone consumer electronics product. Now capable of recording HDTV content, DVRs soon will be incorporated into digital TV receivers.

All DVRs record video onto a hard disk similar to those in personal computers. The size of the disk varies. A model with a 250 Gigabytes disk permits a DVR to record 25 hours of high-definition TV programming or 180 hours of standard definition programming. The more advanced boxes, like a recent version from TiVo, can record up to 450 hours of video.

According to Forrester Research, DVR boxes are now in about three million U.S. households.

Leading the charge is TiVo, with about 1.35 million customers through an alliance with DirectTV and a growing retail base. Next is ReplayTV, which confirms an estimated reach of less than a half million customers. Both services today require one PVR per TV, although TiVo allows its single-tuner boxes to be networked for recording multiple shows at once in separate rooms.

Both TiVo and ReplayTV charge a low monthly subscription fee of USD $4.95 or a lifetime fee of USD $299. The fee gives customers access to the TV schedule database of Tribune Media, used to search for content to record by such variables as program title, timeslot, genre, actor, director, and descriptive keywords.

EchoStar Communication manufactures three models of DVR-equipped satellite receiver system for the Dish Network, including two models that can record HDTV. EchoStar is not reporting the percentage for PVR adoption among it's 9.5 million customers.

Cable operators only recently began rolling out DVRs in their advanced digital set-tops. While no industry-wide numbers are being reported, Scientific-Atlanta reports shipping 324,000 units by the end of 2003. The latest cable box offerings from vendors like S-A, Motorola and Pioneer feature dual-tuner, multi-room DVR servers with HDTV recording capabilities, so only one DVR box is needed. They market these DVRs as part of a home networking solution.

Farther back are the stand-alone DVR consumer electronics products, which can plug into any satellite and cable box or else record broadcast signals off air. Among these are some start-ups, such as Denver-based Interact-TV, which sells a PVR based on the Windows Media Player. The next wave of retail products, like those being developed by Thomson-RCA and Panasonic, integrate hard disk recorders with optical disk DVD recorders, allowing consumers to record and archive digital recordings within the same box.

"2004 has been the most exciting year since ReplayTV launched five years ago," said Bill Loewenthal, VP of product marketing for ReplayTV, now owned by D&M Holdings but still based in Santa Clara, CA. "We expect the whole category to double this year of last."

"Digital video recorders seems to be gaining so much traction in the marketplace because the cost of hard disks keeps coming down," said Brodie Keast, senior VP and general manager of TiVo Inc., based in Alviso, CA. "When we introduced the PVR category in 1999, a 30-hour TiVo box from Phillips cost $1,000. Today you can buy a 450-hour DVR for only $150. Each time we lower the cost, we see more demand growth."

"We were battling a couple of things toward the end of 2002," said Randy Staggs, general manager of global video products for Thomson Electronics, the French company that manufactures the RCA line of TiVo-enabled DSS satellite receivers for DirecTV. "First, the product category suffered from a widespread lack of consumer understanding of the true benefits from the DVR. Second, there was an inability to communicate the value proposition effectively in a short time on the retail sales floor."

"Market awareness has changed dramatically" said Dave Davis, VP of strategic planning and product marketing for subscriber networks at Scientific-Atlanta, based in Atlanta, GA. "Five years ago, the product was only available retail and it was expensive. Today DVR services are available and being marketed to more than 20 million cable homes for as little as five or ten dollars a month. People are willing to try it to see if they like it."

"Demand is increasing as people see PVR boxes in the homes of their friends and neighbors," said Dan Ward, director of marketing for cable and communications at Pioneer Electronics in Burbank, CA. "DVR boxes are selling like hotcakes because people really love the experience. We're especially seeing consumers clamoring for the combination of multi-room networks with HDTV recording."

"Were thrilled by how the PVR has taken off as part of a complete home entertainment package," said Keast. "We are confident that the technology is not going away.' end.

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Euromedia
First published May 2004 in Euromedia
(
c) 2004 by Ken Freed
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