NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Driven by a strong push from the cable industry and robust consumer demand, use of digital video recorders (DVRs) is expected to more than quadruple in the next four years, a report said Monday.

The Yankee Group, a Boston-based communications research firm, predicted that the number of homes equipped with digital video recorders will grow from 7 million at the end of this year to 33.5 million by the end of 2008.

The report identified TiVo (down $0.03 to $6.70, Research) and Echostar (up $0.09 to $31.71, Research) as the dominant manufactures of the machines, which allow recording on a hard drive rather than a tape.

According to Aditya Kishore, the report's author, a significant percentage of people with DVRs record most of the television they watch and view it later, thus enabling them to skip through the commercials.

Other manufacturers mentioned in the report include NDS (down $0.86 to $25.31, Research), Scientific Atlanta (up $0.15 to $27.54, Research) and Motorola (down $0.07 to $17.19, Research).

Kishore also said that Digeo and Microsoft (Research), which make DVR software, have deals with cable companies to have their software on set-top boxes made by Motorola. Motorola is the most widely deployed manufacturer of cable set-top boxes in the United States.

Yankee made its estimate based on the number of stand-alone digital recorders or those built into television cable boxes or satellite equipment. It did not include the number of PC-based recorders.