DVD Player Ownership Surpasses VCR Ownership 180
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."
Question (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
DVD will be the winner in the HiDef War (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, BluRay and HD won't be common place until 2012 at this rate.
By then, we'll have iPod like devices that could hold more video than a Station wagon full of BlueRay discs.
Maybe there are others like me... (Score:3, Interesting)
But the DVD has is own issues... (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Maybe there are others like me... (Score:3, Interesting)
I long ago switched to only DVDs. I have 300+ in my collection, finally surpassing my CD collection. Now with a DVR provided by my satellite service I have no need. My parents have moved much of their VCR collection to DVD with the use of an entertainment system DVD burner. I have friends at work who moved their Disney collections for their children to DVD, taken straight from the VCR tapes. Some they bought as DVD for the extras but most moved over.
It really comes down to ease of use. Just like cassettes died eventually to CD so has VCR to DVD. When you can buy DVD recorders for less than 100 and DVRs coming as nearly standard equipment for Cable and Satellite systems it makes we wonder just how many years VCR has left.
Plus, nothing looks worse on my HD than a VCR'd movie, 'cept maybe CD based movies
Re:Maybe there are others like me... (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought I would agree with you, but I'm not so sure.
We (my wife and I) recently upgraded to a 720p 32" TV. We've got HD feeds via cable, and an Series 3 TiVo.
The signal looks great, and we got rid of a whole mess of VCR tapes that were just cluttering up room, but we hung on to a couple that we wanted to watch. I finally got around to hooking up the VCR via a set RCA cables and, while the picture quality certainly ain't great, it isn't as bad as I was expecting. Now part of it is probably that we are dealing with a smaller screen than most HD people seem to be getting (we just don't have the space for anything larger where we live), and part of it might be that the VCR tapes were relatively "new" (the VCR tapes were pre-recorded movies, that had probably only been seen a few times), but the end result is that the picture looked much better than I was expecting.
Re:Maybe there are others like me... (Score:4, Interesting)
10 years from now, 90% of all VCR's will be out of commission. Transfer your tapes to other storage now!
Re:Blue Ray this, HD-DVD that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But the DVD has is own issues... (Score:3, Interesting)
I beg to disagree with you here and say "Not necessarily."
There is a remote community in Namibia that I visited. These folks live in canyons in a very arid and cold part of the desert. I can assure you that they had every modern amenity known to the western world, everything powered by the sun. I was surprised myself and loved it. The question is, if I found that they did not have a computer ready to be opened up, this would mean 18 hours to get to the nearest town.
Re:DVD will be the winner in the HiDef War (Score:3, Interesting)
And by that time everything will be streamed. Moving data around on funny plastic disks just doesn't make much sense when you have an Internet. The only reason for these formats is 1) There currently isn't enough bandwidth for everyone to stream hi-def content on-demand. 2) Content owners don't want their stuff streamed because of copyright concerns. But as hi-speed Internet access becomes as ubiquitous as DRM becomes unpopular, BluRay and HD will eventually go the way of the floppy.
Re:where is the DVR adoption? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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:Question (Score:2, Interesting)
When i got a DVD i got a combo too. I am planning on keeping both around but i imagine many got it just in case, since the diference if any is very small. Most units i see hooked up are dual units in fact.
Of course the question may have a lot too do with it. Having a VCR is diferent than using a VCR or buying tapes. How many people HAVE a cassette player VS how many people BUY cassettes?!? I have a minicomputer but i don't buy many 8" floppy disks
Re:But the DVD has is own issues... (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Will it really? (Score:3, Interesting)
If ever. This particular format war isn't being handled very well, it seems to me. Such conflicts are invariably bad for the consumer in the short run since we have to guess which tech will come out on top and whoever guesses wrong gets his fingers burnt. Why can't they all just get along? PICK ONE! I don't really care which at this point. Is it just that Sony is still smarting from the Betamax fiasco? If it turns out after all this hate and discontent that the consumer doesn't find a use for the next-generation of shiny plastic discs it'll be just too bad. Worse for them, sooner or later China is going to be able to foist their version of a next-gen SPD (Shiny Plastic Disc) on the world. They'd better just get with the program and give the consumer what he and she wants now. Period. Or they may find their own technologies irrelevant.