Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

The Wall Street Journal

Feeding Your TV With Video From the Computer or Web

The Wall Street JournalNetflix Inc. and Vudu Inc. both use set-top boxes to stream movies over the Internet to a subscribers' television, but the titles are restricted to the companies' movie databases. This month, Netflix and Microsoft Corp. inked a deal where owners of the Xbox 360 can use the videogame console to stream movies and other programming from the Internet to their TVs.

"Research still indicates that the idea of connecting a PC to the TV seems a daunting and cumbersome task for most consumers. According to a 2007 study of 2000 U.S. homes conducted by Parks Associates, a market researcher, just 2.5% had a PC connected to a TV in the living room."

That's one of the reasons television manufacturers are making the sets themselves Internet accessible. Companies such as Panasonic Corp. of North America, Sony Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. in recent months have added Web content to their Internet-connected TVs. Panasonic launched a series of flat-panel TVs in May that can access YouTube. Since the start of the year, Sony has added YouTube and CBS to its list of Internet offerings for TV owners.

From the article, "Feeding Your TV With Video From the Computer or Web" by CHRISTOPHER LAWTON

Previously In The News

CES to Feature Gadgets For Home Entertainment

The already gargantuan show [CES] will be slightly larger than last year. Exhibits will cover 1.6 million square feet of space, up from 1.5 million, and products from 2,500 companies will be on disp...

Intel to Help Seed Digital Start-Ups

Kurt Scherf, an analyst at market-research firm Parks Associates, said Intel's new fund could have a big impact because many other venture-capital concerns stay away from start-ups that aren't likel...

Yes, It's OK to Spy on Your Babysitter: the Do's and Don'ts of the Nannycam

Interest in nannycams is rising; 14% of consumers surveyed this year by Parks Associates, a Dallas market-research firm, expressed interest in using in-home cameras for monitoring nannies and babies...

MIT Counter Intelligence Group Cooks Up Kitchen of the Future

Kurt Scherf, vice president of research at Parks Associates, a Dallas market research and consumer-technology consulting firm, said interactive household devices with energy-savings applications wer...