by Electronic News

Friday 27 May 2005

PVR is huge consumer success

Demand for personal video recorder (PVR) products increased tremendously during the past year, as unit shipments rose from 4.6 million in 2003 to over 11.4 million in 2004.

This is according to In-Stat, which said the demand stems from increased consumer awareness about the concept of time-shifting television programming.

Both pay-TV service providers and PVR product manufacturers are reaping the benefits, the high-tech research firm reports.

Deployment of PVR products has been a success story for both pay-TV service providers and consumer electronics manufacturers. While the current growth of PVRs is being spurred by satellite TV set-top box products and DVD recorders with built-in hard disk drives, other product segments like cable TV set top box-based PVRs are also flying off the shelves.

A report by In-Stat found that PVR service providers, led by companies like TiVo and EchoStar, also enjoyed a banner year, as total worldwide households subscribing to a PVR service increased from 3.6 million in May 2004, to over 9.2 million in May 2005.

North America remains the largest market for PVRs, followed by Japan. In 2004, the two regions accounted for 88 per cent of total worldwide PVR product unit shipments.

Worldwide PVR product revenues have also risen rapidly, more than doubling from $2.1bn in 2003 to over $4.3bn in 2004