Reevaluating the Apocalypse
So our friends over at Great Magna Global USA have decided to reevaluate the home entertainment category destroying DVRs (after resizing the market). And, according to Media Daily News, based upon current behavior and uptake rates, DVR adoption and use may be no better than current pay channel buy rates -- or a third of U.S. TV homes.
As the article notes,
"The problem comes from lower-disposable-income cable customers who are averse to paying more monthly fees for their in-home TV entertainment."Bringing us back to a concept of the consumer wallet: products that are similar to each other lead to substitution or cannabilization. This would seem to call into question at least the major advertising scares for television arising from time-shifting and commercial-avoidance activities -- the prime uses for DVRs.
As to the larger issue of the sales of DVDs, in whatever form they may take and downloading of digital content, well, if digital content is going to be delivered in the form of downloads to separate media boxes in the home, this would indicate that adoption rates will likely not be as great as for DVD players. And that whenever the crisis crosspoint may occur, it's further out than most believe.