A survey from Nielsen suggests people are more likely to watch streaming videos at home than in any other location. Over 74 per cent watch video at home, while a measly 31 per cent fire up YouTube on their daily commute. Why would you watch an eye-straining iPhone 4 video when you have a computer or HDTV in the same room?
It comes down to convenience, quality and data caps. It’s easy to fire up YouTube on the iPad and watch a quick video during a commercial. Much easier than launching some YouTube widget on your TV.
Video quality is also better at home than on the bus. Anyone who has tried to watch a video over 3G knows the pain of jerky playback and dropped connections. It’s just not worth it.
There’s also the issue of 3G data caps. If you watch a lot of video, you could easily exceed that 2GB data cap and find yourself in a world of hurt the next time your mobile bill hits your mailbox. [AllThingsD]
Michael
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 12:20 PMThe 3G signal on my train line is hilarious. That said, I’ve recently watched the entire series of Sopranos and I’m almost done with Oz on the train to work. I think the key word in this report is “streaming”. I’d like to see data for people watching ANY videos on the go.
TSH
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 1:23 PMThis, exactly.
My little sister watched (and loved, and got her friends/boyfriend into) Brimstone and Scrubs thanks to her iPod Mini (the little square one). I had transcoded the video for her and she could easily store a couple seasons at a time.
It’s not about screen size, it’s about convenience. If I wasn’t busy checking blogs and news, I’d be watching transcoded video for most of my commute.
Benoit Faivre
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 1:43 PMI watch TV shows constantly in the train. I have a 41 minutes commute (bayside to brisbane) both ways every day and I can squeeze one episode of TV show per journey. I usually encode them with handbrake to get about 500 Mb per episode and can have at least 8 shows on top of the rest on my 16 Gb iPad. I’ve also tried some streaming but I am not satisifed with the quality that you have over 3G, and if you increase the quality, there’s a lot of stops, so not really handy.