A new report estimates that 21 percent of Americans aged 13 to 54 use a game console to watch movies or TV shows at least once a month, including six percent of Americans who use consoles for streaming or downloaded video content.
The "Over-the-Top TV: A Complete Video Landscape" report was conducted by technology research group Knowledge Networks, and shows DVDs are by far the most popular way to watch video on consoles, with an estimated 17 percent of Americans using a system for that purpose. Only six percent of Americans were shown to use Sony's PlayStation 3 as a Blu-ray player, according to the report.
Younger viewers were far more likely to use a video game console to watch TV or movies, the report shows. For instance, 11 percent of Americans aged 13 to 31 were estimated to use a console for streamed or downloaded video, compared to just one percent of viewers aged 46 to 54.
Across all formats for non-broadcast video watching, including video game consoles, DVDs were by far the most popular method used in the report, followed by digital video recorders and streaming through a PC or laptop.
"The challenge to stakeholders in this space is to move into new digital formats while still leveraging existing technologies; video game systems are proving to be an important transitional device in this space," said David Tice, Vice President and Group Account Director at Knowledge Networks.
The results in the report were based on June 2010 surveys of 1,005 members of an internet-based panel, and were weighted to be representative of the American population. There's a three percent margin of error for questions asked of the entire group.
