Despite a host of new websites offering TV and film downloads, many people are reluctant to use them as they aren't fast or reliable enough, according to a report out today.
Only 15% of internet users have downloaded a full-length TV programme and only 14% a whole movie, according to a survey by YouGov on behalf of CacheLogic, which runs a service distributing DVD-sized files over the web.
A typical movie could be around 700MB, depending on its length and how it is compressed. This would take around 45 minutes to download over a standard 2MB broadband connection, but a user could be able to start watching after a few minutes once enough data has been downloaded and buffered.
Despite this poor take-up, the survey of 2,400 UK internet users suggests the conventional wisdom that a video-on-demand service must be available on the traditional living room TV to be successful may be mistaken.
It found most internet users would watch video-on-demand on their computers if performance and quality were improved.
When asked to imagine a video on demand service that worked "quickly and easily", two thirds of respondents said they would be "fairly interested" or "very interested" in using it. Just 13% were "not at all interested".
There have been a series of new web TV services - many of them offering downloads, some streaming - announced and launched in recent weeks.
The BBC last week received the go-ahead to launch its iPlayer service, offering seven-day catch-ups. Commercial television giant ITV is to launch a video-on-demand service within weeks.
Meanwhile, the founders of Skype have started web TV company Joost, which this month rolled out its full commercial service offering 150 channels of ad-supported TV online. Joost offers the promise of watching real-time TV on a computer, through a "peer-to-peer" service that lets users access video streams from each other -- thus avoiding central servers which can become a bottleneck.
On the film front, internet and telephone provider Tiscali has launched a video-on-demand service offering feature-length downloads from 99p.
