Study: DVD burning on the rise in UK and USA

Getting a DVD-R version of a film or TV show to play on an ordinary DVD player may seem like it requires a degree in computer engineering, but this doesn't seem to be stopping many of you. According to a new survey by tech consultancy Futuresource Consulting, one in three American and British consumers said they have burned a DVD within the past six months. This tally is up from just over a quarter a year ago.

Not surprisingly, Hollywood blockbusters are a favourite rip-and-burn with copying of rented new releases a regular ploy. The UK stands out too for its copying habits. More Britons are burning TV shows in 2008 than they did in 2007 (a jump from 42 per cent to 61 per cent of respondents admit to as much). No doubt the several-season lag Britons must endure before American series are aired is proving too long a wait. And how are they doing it? The most common form of ripping a title is either to use a DVD player to copy to a DVD recorder, or using a computer software application for burning DVDs.

And, in a stat that is sure to alarm Hollywood studios and video-on-demand distributors, the majority of survey respondents said that had they not pirated the film or TV programme, they would have purchased it. To be more specific, 77 per cent of US respondents and 63 per cent of UK respondents said they would have bought at least some of the titles they had burned.

Futuresource Consulting surveyed 3,613 Americans and 1,718 Britons in May in compiling its findings.

Comments

[burndive]

Is this about burning recorded movies and TV shows from a DVR, or is it about copying a commercial DVD to a DVD-R?

The first paragraph states the former, and the second implies the latter.

There's no way that even a fifth of the general population knows how to copy a commercial DVD to a DVD-R, let alone a third. I would say this knowledge is available to about 10% of the adult population, at best.

Who keeps movies on DVD-Rs anyway?

[Brian]

Who commissioned the survey from Futuresource Consulting? That will tell you all you need to know...

[JJ]

Burndive,
one click free software like dvdshrink can do this for 80% of standard dvds today. additional free software like dvddecrypter can do half of the remaining 20%. cheap Software like anydvd can do all the remaining standard dvds.

Your question: "Who keeps movies on DVDRs anyway?"
Answer: anyone with children! They keep extra copies in the car, and they use copied versions for daily use since kids can destroy originals. Don't forget with a family of two or three kids that Toy Story disk might be watched 100 times.

As far as your assertion that 10% of adults know how to do this, I would say 55% of adults under 35 years know how, and if you are older and have a teenager in the house, 100% of them know how to.

[Fred Bloggs]

This is no different from when I was a kid, people would borrow VHS movies and copy them to another tape, or borrow LPs from a music library and copy it to tape.

It works the other way to - I tried to buy some episodes of a show online from Amazon but they would only sell to US users. In another case I tried to buy a helper application online from Apple stores. There is no online apple store in the country I live. I went to my local authorised reseller, who also couldn't sell it so there was no way for me to get a legal version of "quicktime pro".

So of course people then are encouraged to get pirated versions since they can't get them another way. Its unrealistic and cultural colonialism to say well you just can't have it when I could easily have it if I lived in the country next door.

Additionally when software / media giants like adobe and apple charge rip off rates for the same files downloaded from the same hard disk but to different countries of course even people like me who TRY to pay for things are not going to feel bad about ripping off these rip off merchants.

E.g. I tunes (can't get it where I live now) BUT a song costs $1 in USA, #1UKP in UK and 1 Euro on the continent.

Adobe Photoshop (bought online) costs almost twice as much in UK as in USA. They charge #1UKP = $1.

These are VIRTUAL concerns, they can locate their servers in Poland or Malaysia, they're NOT seeing any large cost differentials for doing business in other countries.

THEN they blame the potential customers when they either copy, or they see sales fall since potential customers go elsewhere and then blame copying.