DVD recorders to grow as tuners, hard drives give consumers more options

The worldwide market for consumer DVD recorders will grow from 4.5 million units shipped in 2003 to 61 million units in 2009, according to a forecast from IMS Research.

The company expects that hard disk drives (HDDs) and digital tuners will be integrated into the majority of consumer DVD recorders by 2009.

Based on a recent IMS Research study, DVD recorders are likely to see significant consumer adoption beginning in 2004. Falling prices and the integration of storage and DVR capability made possible by an internal hard drive will accelerate growth of this market.

The proportion of DVD recorders with integrated HDDs is expected to exceed 65 percent of units shipped in Japan this year. The same category is forecast to surpass 50 percent of units shipped in the United States next year and in Western Europe in 2007.

According to IMS Research, a large proportion of DVD recorders with HDDs will also have an integrated digital tuner, enabling seamless digital program viewing and recording. IMS Research forecasts that many factors will drive this convergence:

• Government initiatives, such as the FCC tuner mandate and plug-and-play, and analog signal switch off deadlines for terrestrial programming in many countries
• .
• Strong growth of DTV platforms, such as digital satellite in Japan and digital terrestrial across Europe.
• Falling prices of multi-featured semiconductor components, enabling manufacturers to offer these multi-functional DVD recorders at reasonable prices, although at higher premiums than basic, stand-alone DVD recorders.

Visit IMS Research for more details about the study.

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