Only 5 percent of adults who download video content from the Internet play it on a TV or DVD player, according to survey results from Macrovision.
Macrovision surveyed 2,254 U.S. adults in December 2007 and found that 43 percent download some form of digital media. More than 25 percent said they regularly download TV shows, and 15 percent said they download full-length movies. More than half of those surveyed said they go no further than their computer monitors to watch the downloaded content.
Only 5 percent of those surveyed said they watch downloaded video on a TV or other video-playing device regularly.
Macrovision reported that only 10 percent of those surveyed said they have any desire to watch downloaded video content on a TV.
"While people very quickly figured out the music scenario - either legally or illegally - they haven't figured that out for video," Macrovision Chief Evangelist Richard Bullwinkle told VideoBusiness.
According to ARS Technica, content providers could make it easier to transfer files to portable devices and set-top boxes by mimicking the peer-to-peer experiments of Canadian, Norwegian and other European broadcasters and offer restriction-free downloads.
"That might be a bit too much freedom for most networks to swallow at this pint," ARS Technica commented in a blog entry, "but if they don't come to terms with it soon, they will continue to lose viewers to other, less-legitimate methods of acquiring video content."
The Macrovision survey was commissioned by Harris Interactive.
