The New York Times reports that, according to a survey by Nielson Media Research, for the first time, more Americans have a DVD player than have a VCR. Since 2000, the number of households reporting owning a VCR declined by one-tenth, while the DVD households increased to six times what they were.

The VCR would likely die completely if not for the difficulty in using DVD recorders for temporary video recording.  This market is held by the Digital Video Recorders(DVR). Most DVR packages do not allow for archiving of recorded programs to backup media. Until that changes, which is unlikely considering the video industry’s lobbying on the subject…VCRs will continue to linger as a backup TV recording device.