Prior to that I used tmux for a few years, and screen before that. I suppose the only compelling reason to use DVTM is that it acts like a tiling WM, so if you use one (I use XMonad http://xmonad.org ) the experience is basically the same (mod-h/mod-l to resize, mod-j/mod-k to navigate windows, mod-space to switch layout, etc.).
The main reason I switched is my preference to avoid bloat. DVTM doesn't do everything tmux and screen do, it only does window management. I use dtach ( http://dtach.sourceforge.net ) for persistence. I previously used abduco ( http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco ), but it segfaulted on me a couple of times (months apart, in a non-reproducible way); haven't tried it for about a year, so it might have stabilised.
I use st ( http://st.suckless.org ) as my terminal, again to avoid bloat.