New consumer research from Leichtman Research Group, has found that 27% of TV households in the US have at least one Digital Video Recorder (DVR), and 30% of those households have more than one DVR.
DVR owners are very happy with the service – 87% would recommend their DVR service to a friend, and 81% rate their DVR 8-10 on a 10 point scale (with 45% rating the service as 10).
Yet recorded viewing is not necessarily the priority in DVR households, said LRG – 68% of DVR owners say that they usually watch recorded DVR programs when there is nothing on regularly scheduled TV that they want to watch.
The findings are based on a survey of 1,300 households throughout the United States.
LRG’s research also found that:
- 35% of DVR owners feel that they spend more time watching programs recorded on their DVR than regularly scheduled programs
- 45% of DVR owners record five or fewer programs per week
- 68% of digital cable subscribers say that they have used Video on-Demand – with 85% of this group having used VOD in the past month
- 42% of VOD users are more likely to keep digital cable because of on-demand
“The number of US households with DVRs has essentially doubled in the past two years, and – with a continued push from cable, DBS, and Telco TV providers – will likely double again over the next four years,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group.
“DVRs, along with on-Demand, continue to change the way that many people watch TV. LRG forecasts that DVR and on-Demand’s share of total TV viewing time in the US will increase from about 6% today to 16% at the end of 2012.”
Earlier this month Magna Global forecast that US DVR subscriber households will reach 42.7 million (36% of TV households) by the end of 2012 (see US DVR Subscriber Households To Reach 42.7m).
This is up from the company’s previous estimate of 27.2 million (24% of TV households) as of the end of the second quarter of 2008.
Meanwhile, more than 70% of UK digital video recorder (DVR) owners say that they cannot live without their machines, according to a recent survey commissioned by NDS (see 70% Of DVR Owners Say They Can’t Live Without It).
According to the survey, which asked respondents to rank relative importance of a list of household appliances, apart from the washing machine and the microwave oven, no other household item was deemed more essential than the DVR.
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