15th Nov 2011

Australians prefer to hold onto their digital entertainment despite the rise of Internet streaming services, according to a study undertaken by Panasonic Australia.

The Panasonic Digital Entertainment Study studied the digital entertainment consumption habits of more than 500 respondents from around Australia. The study took in a wide range of participants including different ages, genders, locations and socio-economic backgrounds.

The study found only 21 per cent of the total weekly digital entertainment brought into the home was streamed, while 35 per cent was captured for later viewing/listening and 30 per cent was stored indefinitely.

Overall the average Australian respondent was consuming up to 7GB of digital entertainment weekly from a wide variety of sources including Internet content, movies, music, gaming, eBooks, cable television and self-created content.

Currently 52 per cent of respondents were downloading entertainment at least once per week (up from 41 per cent last year) and this is predicted to rise to 59 per cent next year.

Sophie Barton, Group Marketing Manager, AV, Panasonic Australia said the results were surprising.

“There is definitely a trend towards streaming-based entertainment but right now there is a strong preference for physical ownership of content,” Barton said.

“In some categories it’s understandable, for example where the content is self-made – like a home movie – but it’s harder to explain in others. There does seem to be some connection between the substantiveness of the entertainment like longer movies or e-books, and preservation, however we would need to do further investigation in this area.”

Inversely, mobile devices such as smartphones were being used more often with 40 per cent using their smartphone at least once a day to download entertainment.  Apps accounted for the majority of content downloaded on smartphones with 67 per cent of respondents downloading at least one app in the past week, followed by Games at 39 per cent, music 38 per cent and YouTube clips 36 per cent.

The top types of content that is frequently downloaded across devices include;

- Photos are the most downloaded content at 78 per cent
- This is followed by music and YouTube clips at 64 per cent equal second
- TV shows was the third most downloaded entertainment at 60 per cent
- Movies were the fourth most downloaded at 53 per cent

Barton said the constantly changing consumer behaviour would be challenging for manufacturers.

“The lines are increasingly being blurred by consumers as to where and how they want their digital entertainment, as well as what they do with it afterwards,” Barton said.

“What’s clear is that this behaviour is being driven by the consumers not the manufacturers. We have to keep in touch with the market and be as responsive as we can with product design and functionality.”

Panasonic recently launched its DMR-BWT800 3D Blu-ray Disc Recorder with a 1 terabyte recording capacity.  The recorder is capable of recording 28 days, or 684 hours of full high-definition content¹  With Wireless LAN and DLNA server/client functionality, the Recorder can act as a hub allowing the user to stream content such as images, music and movies wirelessly for viewing on other DLNA-compatible devices in the home as well as receiving content from the home PC and can then archive it to Blu-ray disc.

Panasonic’s range of Blu-ray Disc Recorders and Blu-ray Disc Players have recently been upgraded to include the VIERA Connect platform² . The  automatic upgrade adds Twitter, on-demand television content with Yahoo!7, SHOUTcast, WOW TV, UStream and a range of interactive games such as Solitaire, Poker, and Blackjack.  All existing functionality such as Skype video calling, YouTube™ and Picasa™ photo albums is available.

For more information contact Panasonic on 132 600 or visit www.panasonic.com.au

RELEASED BY PANASONIC AUSTRALIA

¹ 28 days of content available in HM mode only

² DMR-BWT800, DMR-BWT700, DMR-PWT500, DMR-XW385, DMP-BDT310 and DMP-BDT110