Study finds viewers fond of flipping channels between connected TVs and streaming-media players

For many viewers these days, the answer to the video-hardware question “connected TV or streaming media player?” now amounts to “yes,” according to a study released Thursday by Hub Entertainment Research.

That report found that while 83% of U.S. households had either a connected TV or a streaming media player, 44% had both. While 22% reported having only a connected TV, and 14% had only a streaming player.

The release Hub, based on a a survey of 2,517 U.S. consumers conducted in August, did not include a breakdown of how people split up their viewing time between those two types of devices. But it focused on two usage patterns.

On both categories of devices, roughly half of viewers went to the home screen to pick something to watch — 48% on connected TVs, 52% on media players — versus jumping into an individual service’s apps. And remote-control buttons labeled with specific services apparently work to attract audiences, with 38% of connected-TV viewers and 35% of media-player viewers saying they hit these branded buttons “often” or “all the time.”

“Whether people are using a smart TV or a streaming media player, their habits are very similar,” study co-author and Hub senior consultant David Tice said in Hub’s release. “In the short term, both devices are going to co-exist – streaming media players are a long way from being replaced by smart TVs, and can’t be ignored.”

But Avi Greengart, president and lead analyst at Techsponential, suggested that connected TVs would continue gaining ground after a slow start.

“Early smart TVs often weren't very smart — slow, confusing, and missing newer streaming apps,” he wrote in an email. “Most were never connected to the internet.”

But with progress in processing power and the adoption of the same operating systems as many streaming players — for example, Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV — he said that competitive disadvantage no longer exists.

“The long-term trend is away from streaming media sticks and boxes, but it can still make sense to buy one for older sets, or if you prefer the ecosystem,” Greengart wrote. He noted two examples of media players evolving to take on smart-home roles: “Apple TV is also a HomeKit hub, and Amazon's FireTV Cube is a voice-controlled smart speaker.”