Half of UK smart TV owners don't know what the 'smart' bit is for
Bought to be up-to-date, not to connect to interweb
More bad news for TV makers and smart-telly fans: only a third of Brits planning to buy a smart TV are doing so to make use of its internet connectivity.
It gets worse: only half (53 per cent) of smart-telly owners know what the 'smart' but is actually for.
Still, some who don't have manager to connect their smart sets to the internet. Only a quarter of smart TV owners have yet to do so.
No wonder BBC bosses have complained in the past that smart TVs aren't easy enough to use.
YouGov relies on data from a panel of 350,000 folk in the UK - though it didn't say how many of them had said they own, or plan to buy, a smart TV.
We're not entirely surprised by the results. If you're buying a new TV, internet connectivity will only be one factor among several, screen size and picture quality among them.
You're not, after all, going to buy a crap TV just because it can connect to the internet.
Indeed, YouGov's numbers show that picture quality is important to 96 per cent of smart-telly owners and size matters to 93 per cent of them. Next on the list is sound quality, a key criterion for 89 per cent.
Folk who own a smart TV may not all know what it's for, but some are making use of the feature. Just over one in three (35%) of them say they now spend more time watching content provided by catch-up and on-demand services, such as BBC’s iPlayer and Amazon's Lovefilm, than they do watching broadcast TV. ®
COMMENTS
writing
And people some write who articles Reg on the here; don't read rubbish their reading before post they.
Buy what you're told to
> You're not, after all, going to buy a crap TV just because it can connect to the internet.
But a lot of people do buy a crap TV because the nice person in the shop tells them how wonderful it is.
A lot of people have their TV adjusted completely wrongly. Colours (set to the garish "demo" mode), sound may or may not be stereo, treble/bass heavy and until recently may even be watching analog channels (Hi, Mum!), no matter how often their diligent and loving sons explain the "benefits" of digital, HD and even calibrate the set with test images. They know what they like and no amount of telling will convince them otherwise.
just a screen please
Manufacturer (I work for phone) shove loads of silly programs in them. just use an xbox or ps3 if you want real entertainment system. i'd rather pay for just a great screen.
Who wants to use a Walled Garden?
If I want to access the Internet, then I do not want the box I am using to constrain my choice, which then determines the choice of boxes I use - i.e. a PC rather than a TV.
Re: Who wants to use a Walled Garden?
Precisely. I'd rather put the extra "smart" part towards building a Media Center PC. 2 years after you buy your TV, what's the odds that Samsung or Sony will add services to existing sets, vs adding them just to new ones?
I've been researching different ways to get services like Lovefilm, Netflix, iTunes movies and so forth the conclusion is that the only thing that really works is a PC. It might cost a bit more, but it is guaranteed to work for just about everything and will continue to do so, regardless of what comes around the corner for many years.
