New study: Few use consoles for downloads, DVD’s
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Written by Atila on July 15, 2008 – 2:17 am
The Diffusion Group says hardly anyone (13 percent) with a game console capable of playing DVD’s or downloads (80% of 8 million US game console households – that’s 6.4 million households, by the way) actually uses them for that.
Of the hardly anyone category, three-quarters of those use it only for DVD. Only one-fourth (breaking that down, that’s one-fourth of 13 percent of 6.4 million – or 208,000 households) have also ventured online to purchase or rent a digital movie download.
Presumably, that small percentage has in fact watched the downloaded content on its television sets. So, adding to that the 100,000 or so AppleTV’s that have been sold and the handful of other devices and software apps out there, we now know how many people are really making the PC-TV connection.
Let’s be generous and say that’s about 300,000 households. Out of what, more than 100 million US households, virtually all of whom have a TV, and the 30-50 million that now have broadband? That tells us there is a long ways to go before PC-TV connections are anything but the province of geeks and techno-freaks.
Here’s a Diffusion Group canned quote that backs up my assertion: “Today’s next-generation games consoles such as the Xbox 360 or Sony PS3 are true digital multimedia powerhouses. Yet very few of these devices are connected to the Internet and, even though these same platforms may feature a high-definition DVD playback system, very few consumers are using them for non-gaming media applications.”
Here’s some more proof of that:
Even though 80 percent own a console capable of playing DVDs, only 30 percent believe their console actually enables DVD playback. Diffusion Group calls that “a major barrier to persuading consumers to start using these platforms for non-gaming media consumption.” No duh.
The good news for the Internet-TV connection: Among those that own a game console connected to the Internet (the excerpt released doesn’t say how many), 42 percent have used their game console to watch an Internet-based movie on their TV. So, the folks who know enough to jack their machine into the Web actually seem to know what to do after that.
The study would seem to be authoritative: it is based on a survey of 2,000 U.S. broadband heads-of-household. Is that what I am these days, a “broadband head of household?” Shall I tell TVMama? I know what she’d say.
