• by Wayne Friedman , April 9, 2014

Among those who use streaming media players, Roku owners tally slightly better results than Apple TV when accessing new subscription video platforms.

Market research company Parks Associates says 86% of Roku owners, compared with 77% of Apple TV owners, use a subscription over-the-top video company like Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant Video.

Looking at specific subscription video-on-demand services (SVOD), Roku owners use more Netflix than Apple owners -- 75% to 63%. But Apple owners use more Amazon Prime than Roku -- 40% versus 28%. Apple TV owners also use more Hulu Plus than Roku -- around 35% to 30%.

Most recently, Apple TV has been quietly building business for the streaming video device to the point that it now exceeds $1 billion a year in revenue.

In an earlier Parks Associates estimate, Roku appears to be the choice of U.S. homes with broadband connections, with 56% having one of the devices. Apple TV is in 23% of broadband homes and Google’s Chromecast, 10%. Amazon has also join the business, launching its Fire TV recently.

But overall estimates from IHS put Apple TV on top. That research has Apple TV in around 15% of U.S. TV homes -- around 17.3 million customers, with Roku in 6.4% of U.S. TV homes, around 7.4 million.