A couple of articles caught my eye today that give a snapshot of online video watching in the here and now. Last summer Dan Rayburn estimated that fewer than three million consumers stream online video to their TVs using a hardware solution like the Xbox or Roku box. Today he says that number has hardly changed in almost a year. The analysis doesn’t appear to factor in people who watch online video on their computers, but the assumption is likely that a computer will never compete in the mainstream against a big-screen TV.
Meanwhile, Todd Spangler cites a recent Nielsen/CTAM study that shows the heaviest viewers of online video watch about an hour and a half worth of online content per week and roughly 21 hours of regular TV. These “Extreme Techies” are primarily male, in their early thirties, and have an average income of $67,000.
So who’s watching online video? Apparently not that many people. Yet. Which is part of why the money side of the business is so hard to figure out.
Media Experiences 2 Go 
I’m really skeptical about the numbers he cites. For example, his “estimation” of 445,000 connected TiVos is way off. At Streaming East, TiVo said this number was closer to 900,000. Also the numbers that he cites for Roku are way to low. I’d also argue that 1 million Xbox/Netflix subs is too low based upon Netflix and Xbox Live growth numbers following the integration. While some of this data can be hard to come by, it’d be nice to see more accurate numbers before jumping to conclusions.