Monday, March 24, 2008

Web Video Trapped in PCs

Despite the potential for delivering ad-supported web content to TVs, the market is pitifully small today. Technical challenges and a lack of options in sharing video have limited the audience to a mere 5 percent, according to a new survey from Harris Interactive (as quoted on ArsTechnica.

Only five percent of those surveyed said that they watch video on a TV or other video-playing device regularly.... only 10 percent of those surveyed said that they have any desire to do so.

The overall audience of those who have downloaded video was 43 percent, and more than a quarter said they watch TV regularly. Probably just as many use TiVo or another DVR instead. A surprising 15 percent said they had downloaded full length movies, which seems unbelievable considering the small audience that Movielink and its competitors have drawn.

These numbers are low not because people would never consider doing so -- it's because today its nearly impossible to do so unless you work for the Geek Squad. Check out this horror story about trying to get a wireless media player working. Other companies such as TiVoare doing a better job of enabling selected video files to be moved to a PC while Apple continues the long uphill slog of making Apple TV a product worthy of its cost.

By John Gartner at 08:42 AM | Comments (0)

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