As television and devices that take advantage of our screen time continue to evolve, so does our utter obsession with using TV grow.

Nielsen posted on its blog a study the group recently conducted that looked at what Americans have been using their TVs for in the past six years.

To preface the study, Nielsen shows how TV usage has changed over the past 50 years. In 1960, only seven percent of all households received cable. In 1990, 56 percent received cable and 66 percent owned a VCR. In 2006, 89 percent of TV was viewed live and DVR usage only accounted for 1.6 percent of our TV time.

Things have changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Today, 98 percent of American homes own a TV and have some kind of device (i.e. DVR, game console, DVD player) attached to the television. The amount of live television content being viewed has dropped to 85 percent while DVR usage accounts for eight percent of our TV time now.

Nielsen says that of three major devices that we connect to our TVs, the DVR gets the most use. While the amount of live TV content being watched may have dropped, it doesn’t mean people are watching less television. In fact, the time a person spent watching TV content increased 19 minutes year-over-year in the first four weeks of 2011.

If the DVR is so important to our watching habits, who is driving it? It would appear that females aged 18 to 54 use the DVR the most by devoting 10 percent of their viewing time to the DVR.

It would seem that the lowly DVD player is on its way out as less and less people use them. What has seen an increase is the game console with 3.9 percent of TV time being devoted to them. The increase in game console usage is being driven by teens who devote 11 percent of their TV time to using a game console.

It’s important to remember, however, that game consoles simply replaced the DVD player. With services like Netflix and Hulu as well as its ability to play DVDs natively, it only makes sense for dedicated DVD player usage to drop.

For those wanting to get into the nitty gritty of demographics, Nielsen has you covered. Asian Americans spent the least amount of time watching television in 2011. They did, however, see the biggest increase in viewing from 2010. In contrast, African-Americans and Hispanics spent less time watching TV in 2011 compared to the previous year.

Asian-Americans spent the least amount of time watching live television, but made up for it by devoting the most time to DVR and DVD use. Hispanic homes were found to use gaming systems the most while African-American homes used DVD players the most.

Here’s an image that breaks down TV usage among age groups:

I think I’m mostly surprised by the fact that people in my age group were still using VCRs in 2011. I keep around an old Betamax player for kicks, but I never actually use it.

While traditional TV is still clearly dominating American viewing habits, it’s clear that it’s beginning to lose its lead. The rise of the DVR and game consoles with streaming technology are cutting into its market.

All of this could explain why cable companies want to encrypt their signals. They don’t want to lose any more business to these services or new services like Boxee.