• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 8, 2011

Everyone has preferences when it comes to paying for entertainment content does have its preferences. Increasingly, consumers prefer to pay for movies, and not so much for TV shows.

U.S. consumers spent $385 million buying and renting movies via the Internet in 2010 --up 38% from the year before -- moving ahead, for the first time of monies paid for online television shows, which was at $366 million.

Mind you, the entire Internet digital video market, in terms of video advertising revenue, is around $1.1 billion. About $500 million of that comes from "premium TV" shows found on Hulu.com, TV.com and other places. So overall, TV might still seem to be the winner to some entertainment executives.

Still, when it comes to consumers paying to see digital offerings of TV shows, this survey might send a signal to those proponents of "TV Everywhere" -- Time Warner and Comcast -- as well as those restless partners at Hulu looking for bigger monetization of their digital versions of TV shows.

A look at consumer purchasing behaviors when it comes to entertainment history is important. Consumers seem more ready to buy theatrical movies than TV shows -- perhaps still figuring there are plenty of places to get "free", advertising-supported versions of TV shows.

Netflix executives, take note. Consumers might more easily pay Netflix for the digital delivery of essentially movies at $7.99 a month than for Hulu Plus for its digital delivery of TV shows at $7.99 a month.

While at lot has been made that the two digital services are heading in the same direction, right now -- for the most part -- consumers perceived a digital movie service akin to paying some sort of DVD rental or pay-per-view fee. But what about a TV show? Consumers are still not use to paying for that -- even given the success of iTunes.

In part this rising online movie trend comes from a growing number of devices -- video game consoles, set-top boxes and the iPad - where one can screen films. This is compounded by the slipping business of physical DVD sales and rentals.

Interestingly, a few years ago TV providers made a lots of revenue from big DVD packages of entire seasons of TV series. Perhaps if consumers were to bite again in a new way for TV, it would need to be for something they can hold onto -- even virtually.