Okay, here's a shocker... 79.2% of all American households have at least one VCR. This statistic jumped out at me far more than the headline of Nielsen's latest press release that "DVD Players Surpass VCRs."I mean, it shouldn't be surprising. My parents are satellite subscribers. They have hundreds of channels at their fingertips. They have a 32" LCD HDTV. And they have a VCR. And they can't seem to figure out why hi-def programs they record on VHS don't look very good during playback. Old technologies die hard. Except for the 8-track.
Anyway, apparently DVD players have finally overtaken VCRs in US homes, with 81.2% of all households reporting that they have a DVD player. That's up 6% from last year.
Nielsen's been tracking DVD ownership since 1999, when only 6.7% of households reported owning one. 88.6% of households had a VCR at that point. So while DVDs have caught up over the last 7 years, it looks like a relatively small number of people are ready to throw out that VCR altogether, whether they use it or not.
1. I think people are scared to throw away their VCRs while they still have content trapped on tapes. I have some musical performances that are on tape plus a few home movies that I've been too lazy to burn to DVD. Until I actually do it, I'll still keep my VCR around.
Posted at 7:55AM on Dec 20th 2006 by Angel