Coming of Age

Sonos Inc.

Analog TV is dead, CD sales are down and over-the-air radio continues to wither. So, it’s only natural that the delivery of video and music is moving online. And consumers are following—in droves.

In November 2009, the average viewer watched more than 12 hours of online video, according to comScore, which is a market-research firm. That figure jumped from 2.5 hours in May 2007. Meanwhile, a January 2009 study by Arbitron/Edison Research found that 17 percent of those surveyed listened to Internet radio in the week before the survey—up from 8 percent in 2005.

The Internet as global jukebox is well-documented, but the rise of services that deliver TV shows and movies over the Web, which didn’t exist when we last reviewed streaming audio/video equipment 4 years ago, means that the Web is turning into a video library, too. And it’s only been in the past 2 years that high-definition video streaming became a reality.

Consequently, TV has joined radio as an anywhere, anytime proposition. You can catch up on episodes of “Mad Men” just as easily as your favorite NPR show anywhere that you have a broadband connection to the Internet. And what’s best of all is the price: Radio and recent network TV shows are largely free; streaming movie rentals typically cost $2 to $3; and movie purchases range from $5 to $20 for new releases.

That’s great, but what you really want is to move all of this content from your small-screen, mini-speaker computer to your big-screen TV or home-theater audio system. Four years ago, there were only a handful of products that could accomplish this task—known as streaming—and the video players especially weren’t ready for prime time because of cumbersome setup and confounding format compatibility issues.

Although compatibility between players and services remains an issue—albeit much less of one—today’s streaming players are not only ready, they’re everywhere. We counted more than 100 dedicated products that stream audio, video or both, and hundreds more that deliver streaming as a secondary function—including high-end TVs, Blu-ray Disc players, digital video recorders and video-game consoles. These days, you almost have to go out of your way to avoid taking the plunge into streaming.

THINK INSIDE THE BOX. A TV that has built-in streaming is ideally the best way to stream video from the Internet to your TV. There’s nothing simpler than plugging in a single device and turning it on. However, TVs that have this capability typically start above $1,000, and video-streaming services and formats are changing so rapidly that your TV’s streaming capability likely will be outdated long before you’ll need a new TV. In other words, don’t buy a TV just for its streaming—at least not yet.

A better bet is a dedicated set-top box (STB), which is more likely to receive updates to keep up with the latest streaming services and formats. Furthermore, streaming STBs now can be found for less than $100. Four years ago, you typically would have had to pay $300.

Today’s streaming STBs also are vastly easier to install and use than their predecessors were. Previously, these devices were fit only for hackers or rocket scientists. Now, thanks to devices that are designed to work with popular formats and streaming sites, you can stream movies in minutes without knowing the difference between VC-1 and MPEG-4 (two of the dozens of video-encoding formats that you might encounter).