14 DAY TRIAL // Remember the good old VCR? Well, it seem that its days are numbered since a study recently published by Nielsen Media Research reports that 81.2% of U.S. households owned a DVD player in the 3rd quarter of this year, while only 79.2% are still using the analog video recorders. It is for the first time when the DVDs surpass VCRs in the war that started 10 years ago.
The same study shows that the penetration of new technologies such as HD consumer end products (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players, HD ready LCDs and Plasmas) is rather poor. It seems that people who dump VCRs are turning their heads more in the SD DVD direction and the HD media registers low sales. The HD formats are too expensive to worth the upgrade, motive for which folks who give up on their old VCRs generally end up buying cheap DVD units.
In case you don't remember much about VCR's maybe a little history lesson will prove useful. The first VCR was Ampex VRX-1000, released in 1956. The device was bulky and rather difficult to use but it still carried a price tag of $50,000. Almost 20 years later the war between Betamax and VHS formats was going to bring the first affordable VCR units.
The first DVDs appeared in 1996 after the finalization of the standard. Because they used optical reading and writing even the early devices had a stylized form and carried a decent price tag. Actually the situation is rather similar at the moment with emerging high-def media set surpass DVD media sales. But I guess it will take another 5 years for that to happen. The similarities don't end here with the HD formats having about the same penetration rate as was registered in the case of DVD vs. VCR back in 1999.