Cage Match: DVD Beats VCR!
For the first time, more Americans have a DVD player than have a VCR says Nielsen Media Research. People aren't throwing out the VCR: They've lost only 1/10th of their popularity, while DVD players are 6 times more popular than they were 6 years ago.
Why are people keeping VCRs? Well, DVDs don't easily record programs. "To completely replace the VCR, you would need a DVD and a digital video recorder," said Paul Lindstrom, Nielsen's senior vice president for national custom research. "That type of utility has kept it in the home." Hmm, not in our home. —MEGHANN MARCO
DVD Player Tops VCR as Household Item [New York Times]
Post a comment
Comments:
You can always use something like EyeTV (for Macs) or MythTV as a recorder. No MPAA DRM crud on those.
I have a buddy who has one of those spiffy Tivo's with a DVD recorder built in and I thought the quality of the recordings looked terrible. No idea what he had the settings at but it was so damned pixellated (on a cartoon no less) that I would have preferred the fuzziness of a VHS quality tape.
I love my DVD recorder. I am halfway through transferring my VHS tapes to DVD.
Some movies won't transfer, but everything else does.
VCR's? Seriously? People still use those? I'm throwing mine out as soon as I finish transferring all my old-school porn to h.264-encoded AVI files.
VHS is much more durable with kids, they can put in their own tapes without damage Toyryus has only just started carrying more dvds than vhs. They were a holdout for a long time. If I were more organized, I'd copy the dvds first. Instead, I just expect a certain mortality rate.
I still own four VCRs, two VCR/DVD combo players, one TV/VCR combo (a gift for when I went away to college in 1996), and a DVD recorder with a videotape port on it. We still tape some shows on VCR because a three-band TiVo hasn't come out yet that we can afford, and I don't really have the technical knowledge for MythTV, as cool as it sounds.
I think the more telling thing is that DVD players can now be had more cheaply than VHS players.
It has in ours! Pfft! I'm not paying reams of money for digital cable or the rip-off known as TIVO! (Lifetime Memberships!... no, nevermind!) I'm just waiting for the stand-alone DVRs to come down in price...