• Ars Technica, Friday, March 21, 2008 11 AM

According to a new survey, 95 percent of adults who download video content from the Web hardly ever play that content on a TV or DVD player. The Macrovision survey of 2,254 American adults found that 43 percent download digital media content from the Web. More than 25 percent said they download TV shows regularly, while 15 percent said they download full-length movies. However, more than half of those surveyed said they only watch digital media content on their computers.

The results illustrate the restrictive limitations of digital rights management, which doesn't easily allow for downloaded content to be converted to DVD and other formats. Hulu, the joint digital Web site and distribution venture from NBC Universal and News Corp., is just one example of a content provider using DRM to force users to watch content through a Web browser.

Only 5 percent of those surveyed said they regularly watch video on a TV or other video-playing device. Those users download content through digital distributors like Apple's iTunes Store of Microsoft's Xbox Live marketplace, but 5 percent is still negligible. Meanwhile, the Macrovision survey says that just 10 percent of consumers want to watch downloaded content on a TV, anyway.

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