There's little doubt that connected televisions, streaming media boxes and even video game consoles have played a huge role in how we consume streaming media at home. According to new data from The NPD Group, the tides have turned as televisions are now the go-to device for watching online content in most homes. This marks the first time that TVs have overtaken the personal computer in this metric.
The company's latest survey reveals 45 percent of consumers use their TV as the primary display when watching free or paid videos from the Internet, up from just 33 percent a year ago. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the percentage of users that viewed streaming content using a computer declined from 48 percent to just 31 percent in the same span of time. As you can see, the figures have almost been flipped completely in favor of television viewing.
Netflix is the clear winner in terms of web-to-TV video. 40 percent of people that reported watching online content from a television said they used Netflix Watch Instantly to do so. 12 percent of respondents accessed content from Hulu Plus and just four percent watched on Vudu.
Not surprisingly, the data indicates that one out of every five connected television owners no longer use peripherals like media players, video game consoles and Blu-ray players to consume digital content.
NPD's quarterly survey includes data collected from approximately 1,200 broadband households in the US.