The amazing rate of penetration by Netflix, and to a lesser extent, Hulu and Hulu Plus, on all sorts of Internet connected devices, from game consoles, to Blu-ray players, have paid dividends for these and other web content delivery companies, as a new survey shows 20% of Americans are watching web content on their TVs (instead of on computers).
The survey, conducted in July with 4,800 respondents involved, was conducted by Boston company Strategy Analytics.
Extrapolating the results, it means that 42 million Americans are watching TV shows and movies, on their TV, via the web, and most are doing it via their game consoles. A lot of people also used their home networks, and their Blu-ray players to do the same.
The research also found that the rate of people doing this in the U.S. is actually double that of Europe, where computers are still the primary viewing platform for web content. This may be due to the lack of an unified service like Netflix, that has managed to get on just about every device, as well as the lack free and/or fresh content, such as those offered by Hulu and Hulu Plus (both are available in the U.S. only at the moment).
And with both Netflix and Hulu Plus revenue generators for content creators (as well as for the companies themselves), and with web piracy rampant according to the movie and television industries, it seems choice, and not price (nobody can beat piracy's price!), is the key factor driving adoption of legal viewing platforms.
"In spite of the technical challenges, many people want to be freed from the constraints of traditional, managed television services if their choice of content is not available when they want, where they want and at a price they are willing to pay," concluded the report's author, David Mercer. Movie/TV studios should take note, and focus their attentions on choice (and reasonable pricing), as opposed to focusing all their energies on technical and legal solutions to the web piracy problem.
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