US researcher Parks Associates has issued research that suggests Digital Video Recorders are the most popular in the UK among European viewers. It found that over 35% of UK broadband households own a DVR and said that the UK was the first European nation to adopt DVRs in significant numbers.
It was only a five country study, but it’s fairly obvious that this has little to do with UK tastes and more to do with how competitive and saturated the pay TV environment has become in the UK, with a face off between Virgin Media and BSkyB, and new arrivals in the form of Homechoice IPTV, and BT Vision and others.
The study also showed that Spain had the lowest level of DVR uptake, and that France on around 22% was the country with the next highest density of DVRs after the UK.
The study also claimed that even young UK consumers with a DVR continue to watch broadcast TV more often than recorded programs, though we find that fairly difficult to believe.
“If Americans are wedded to their TVs, Europeans are just dating,” said John Barrett, director of research, Parks Associates. He pointed out that while UK adoption rates are strong by European standards, they still fall behind the US, where over 40% of broadband households now own a DVR.
Quite simply this is due to the fact that TiVo got its first big break in the US with DirecTV, which is what triggered the DVR war in the US, and established the concept which is now only slowly being distributed around the world. No pay TV operator in their right mind would introduce them if they didn’t have to in order to compete, but they do make a difference to churn, hence DirecTV’s and other moves to support them.
Parks also rightly points out that strong public broadcasting in European and especially the UK leaves less room for pay-TV services. However DVRs integrated with EPGs are now coming to those services and they will accelerate DVR take up on free to air services.