GAMING CONSOLES MOST POPULAR FOR MOVIES

Nielsen Company, the pre-eminent media eyeball counter, reported last Wednesday that consumers are increasingly using their gaming consoles - Xbox, Wii, and PS-3 - for streaming movies and TV shows.

Gaming consoles readily connect to the Internet so they are used to access VOD services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and other streamers including ESPN and the Major League Baseball Network for sports.
Nielson found that gaming consoles and AppleTV were the most popular ways people chose to view movies on their HD-TVs. Proven to be very effective in accessing Netflix, Nielson found that half of Netflix users utilize streaming from game consoles.

Streaming video accounted for 14% of the average time spent using the X-box, for the PS-3 it was 15%, but for the Wii 33% of owners spent their time streaming movies or TV content.

Both Xbox and Sony's PS-3 consoles are also popular as DVD players with the PS-3 capable of playing BluRay discs. Sony last week stated it would exceed its forecasted sales of PS-3 and expects to sell 1.5 million of the consoles in fiscal 2011. 

Cheers,
Jim Lavorato