When I started working with Motorola in 2002, the mainstream media was just barely beginning to talk about digital video recorders. We begged and pleaded with reporters to talk about this revolutionary technology, but most people weren’t interested yet.
Fast forward to yesterday. One of the Motorola execs had a call with a reporter from a major news organization and I took the opportunity to listen in. The conversation started with HDTV, moved to HD VOD, hit on television’s integration with the Internet and ended on portable media and mobile TV. None of the topics were new from a Motorola perspective, but it suddenly struck me how much more aware the media is now of television technology. Sure the niche pubs and blogs have been covering this stuff for years, but not the mainstream press.
Why the difference? That’s easy. It’s not just the geeks (me included) who have these technologies in their homes anymore. A few stats to prove it:
- Digital TV on the rise. According to the CEA:
Total sales of analog displays 2006: $1.4 million
Total analog display sales predicted for 2007: $273,000
- On average, operators have roughly doubled their HD content from a year ago.
- There were 11.7 million US households with video on demand in 2005. In-Stat predicts that number will nearly double by 2008 to 22.6 million households.
- Motorola alone shipped over a million DVRs last quarter.
