One of the many nuggets offered by our latest survey digital home device markets is that more than 50 million TV homes around the world will be using a digital video recorder (DVR) by the end of this year. The US is leading the way, with nearly 30 million DVRs now in use (25% penetration), certainly a significant lead over Europe, where we estimate the installed base at around 14 million (8% of homes). (Note: these estimates include only DVRs provided by digital TV service providers. In particular, they exclude DVD recorders that incorporate a hard disk drive and therefore can serve as a DVR; this option is particularly popular in Japan.) The DVR has come a long way, but it has taken longer than many observers expected. Reporting on TiVo and ReplayTV in 1999, we noted: As each company gets drawn into wider industry alliances, it will inevitably lose control of its own destiny. DirecTV will want TiVo to serve its audiences, not those of rival services. Eventually the broadcaster will either swallow TiVo completely or develop its own solution independently." Well, DirecTV does have its own solution, although the TiVo partnership continues. But as we suggested, TiVo's share of the DVR market has dwindled to a few percentage points as operators push their own proprietary solutions. The DVR has now become a key competitive tool for digital TV providers and is set to move into the mainstream over the next few years. sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.strategyanalytics.com/blogs/dmercer">