According to new consumer research from Leichtman Research Group, digital video recorders (DVRs) are now in more than one in every five households in the United States, which is up from one in every 13 households two years ago.

“The number of U.S. households with DVRs has rapidly increased over the past few years. Fueled by a continued push from cable and DBS providers offering combination HD/DVR set-top boxes, LRG forecasts that the number of U.S. households with DVRs will grow to over 60 million by the end of 2011,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group Inc., in a prepared statement.  “The growth of DVRs does not mean that the era of live TV viewing has ended – LRG estimates that 95 percent of all TV viewing in the U.S. is still of live TV.” 

The study also found that 53 percent of DVR owners also have an HDTV set, and that the mean household income of DVR owners is 33 percent above average.

According to the research, while 84 percent of DVR owners rate the ability to skip commercials as very important, just 8 percent of DVR owners say it is the greatest benefit of having a DVR, which must be music to the ears of advertisers and ad agencies.

During the upfront ad season this past spring, a large number of broadcast and cable networks moved toward a measuring metric that included live viewing plus DVR viewing over three days following a show’s original airing.