As more and more content aggregates online, there has been a concurrent surge in online penetration. According to a new report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, seven in ten Americans who go online from home now connect via high-speed lines. Almost half, 47%, of all Americans now have broadband at home, up from just 30% two years ago. (Amazingly, 29% don’t use the internet at all. It is not clear if that is a purposeful opt-out, or if there are other economic factors involved.)
All this contributes to the changing entertainment experience at home. Storage is always an issue with digital files since they can be such bandwidth hogs. The more you compress them, the greater the degradation of the image. But technology always catches up with technology. The day when what we enjoy on our home HD monitors is of equal quality to what comes in over the pipes is already here.
People don’t care where or how they get their entertainment, we just want it. The smart companies have figured that out already.
