"Serge Auckland" wrote
in message
"Don Pearce" wrote in message
...

Now this is interesting on the Beeb news web site. A
bunch of graphs showing gadget ownership. Phones, CD
players and video recorders have all peaked, and are on
their way down. DVDs and mobiles are just about
plateau-ing. Internet related stuff is still climbing.
For how long, I wonder? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12058944

Some of the charts reflect trends in Europe and the UK, but not in the USA.
Central heating and washing machines have been at the 90%+ level since or
before the 1950s in the US. Even people living at or below the poverty level
had them. I surprised by the difference when I lived in Germany in the
1960s.

Any survey of this sort depends rather on what the
question is, and how it's answered. For example, the
decline in telephone availability is pointless.If almost
everyone has access to a mobile 'phone, then the need for
a fixed telephone, which is I presume what the question
asked, goes away. Ditto with the question of a video
recorder: If they mean tape based, then of course it is
in decline, but if they include hard-disc based PVRs,
then I suggest that the availability of video recording
will possibly be greater now than before.

DVRs are very common in cable boxes that are used in the US. I believe that
some US cable-TV networks don't even offer cable interfaces that lack DVR
features.

What's sad for me is the decline in CD players, because
these will not have been replaced with networked audio
players of the Sooloos or Squeezebox kind, but have been
largely replaced by portable players, of the iPod kind,
or on-line players of the Spotify kind, both playing
heavily data-compressed audio. Nevertheless, both at
least (especially Spotify) encourage listening to a wider
genre of music, so are helping to widen musical
appreciation, which has to be for the good.

The presumption that portable players are necessarily playing
lossy-compressed files is false. At least three lossless compression
formats are in wide use, and many players (even my tiny Sansa Clip) support
plain old .wav files. There is considerable evidence that
lossless-compressed audio files play with identical fidelity as uncompressed
files.