Brits have no love for bits and bytes

Brits have a shaky grasp of bits and bytes, placing "little monetary or emotional value" on the digital value they own. This is the conclusion of HP, which recently surveyed 1,000-plus British consumers.

Here are some findings:

• The average Brit's digital media collection is valued at £482.
• Twenty-seven per cent value their digital content at less than £50. (Spot The Pirate Bay users.)
• Seventy-one per cent have never lost their media library and are not worried about security. (Aargh! Fools!)
• Two-thirds want hard copies of photographs and music, 75 per cent want their films to come with packaging, and 90 per cent want their books to stay as books.
• And it's not just the oldies. Almost 40 per cent of 16-34 age groups still buy CDs and DVDs alongside digital formats.

As HP notes, its research suggests that Brits treat their media collections more as a utility than as a personal purchase. But they don't seem ready to adopt utility-style payments. Subscriptions are a long way from being mass market, with 73 per cent saying that they can "never see a time when they’d move to a 100% subscription model for their music and films (such as Spotify)"

Just because they can't see it, doesn't mean it won't happen at some point. My children - oldest one is 14 - consume all of their music in the home via Spotify - except for the bits they check out on Youtube. And the old must always give way to the young. At some point.

So why did HP run this survey. Well it has a product to promote, the HP MediaSmart Server, which it describes as "basically a small PC with lots of storage".