Nielsen: Disc Player Use Rivals Social Media

25 Mar, 2015 By: Erik Gruenwedel

---

Social media may be everywhere, but it hasn’t surpassed DVD

As U.S. consumer interaction with media becomes increasingly on-demand, mobile and social, monthly use of DVD and Blu-ray Disc players remains surprisingly strong, according to new Nielsen .

Consider that on a monthly basis 142 million consumers use either a DVD or Blu-ray player — the same number that access social media on an app on a smartphone. That’s more than people who connect with social media on a computer (133 million) or on the Web (124 million) on a smartphone.

Nielsen didn’t specify how the disc players were used — either for packaged media or streaming media — but their use topped video game consoles (97 million) and multimedia devices (43 million).

The main reason “old school” technology such as a disc player continues to resonate is the television. It remains at the center of the home entertainment universe. Nielsen found that 285 million people watch traditional TV on a monthly basis. That dwarfs the number of people accessing the Internet on a computer (198 million) or listening to the radio (258 million).

“While the average American adult spent nearly a week (149 hours 14 minutes) on average watching traditional television each month in fourth-quarter 2014, other ways to connect with content were desirable as well,” Nielsen wrote in a blog post.

Indeed, 181 million watched time-shifted content, underscoring the value of the DVR, on-demand programming and post-primetime viewership tracking.

The research firm found that U.S. adults spent well over 15 hours each month watching time-shifted content, close to 30 hours using the Internet on a computer, and over 43 hours using an app or the Web on a smartphone. In addition, the average consumer's monthly time spent listening to radio reached 58 hours and 36 minutes.

While Nielsen said the rise in technology and TV-connected devices has given consumers — and programmers, marketers, agencies and advertisers — myriad distribution choices, among those options remains packaged media.

“The current state of the media universe is much like that of the cosmos — continually changing,” the research firm wrote.

Bookmark it: