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One in four online consumers use a digital video recorder (DVR), according to survey from ABI Research.

DVRs were made popular by TiVo but there is a trend that consumer's video service provider is becoming the main supplier of time-shifting technology to people in the form of an advanced set-top box.

"The market for DVR is fairly mature," said Michael Wolf, research director at ABI Research. "While just a few years ago many consumers still did not have a firm grasp of the benefit DVRs would bring them, today the concept of DVR and time-shifting is fairly well understood."

"That being said, adoption levels are still fairly dependent on service provider rollouts and whether consumers are interested in paying additional fees for the benefits of a DVR."

The survey found that both TiVo and service provider DVR customers are just as likely to skip most commercials. Almost four out of five TiVo customers and over 82 percent of service provider DVR customers said they skip all or most commercials. Both groups are likely to record a substantial amount of TV per day, with close to half of TiVo owners saying they record two or more hours per day and 43 percent of service provider DVR owners record a similar amount of shows.

"Our research has found that behavior in usage of DVRs is similar regardless of who provides it, or the demographic profile of the user," said Wolf. "While there are slight variations in usage based on age and income, once you put the technology in their hands the vast majority of consumers show similar behavior."