People are now more inclined to watch video content on their PCs, according to research.
And in Britain the numbers of people visiting TV, film and video sites is up by 28 per cent in the last year, according to figures from Nielsen Online.
YouTube is the most popular of these sites among Brits, with an audience of 9.4 million. The BBC's TV and film sites are the next most visited, with 6.7 million.
Alex Burmaster of Nielsen Online said: "Whether it's additional content relating to a particular TV programme or actually watching episodes or videos through their computer, we are starting to see a significant spread of entertainment consumption from the so-called 'lean-back' method of TV to the 'lean-forward' method of the PC."
The figures were compiled by monitoring the usage habits of some 45,000 surfers who have voluntarily downloaded a data recorder onto their PCs.
Burmaster related the popularity of TV sites to the recent troubles encountered by TV-links.co.uk.
"It's interesting to note that TV-links.co.uk - the ninth most popular site and, amongst the top ten, second only to YouTube in terms of total audience time - has now been closed after claims it was illegally providing links to download film content and TV shows," he said.
"Whilst the legality of the site is in question, the appetite that people have for watching this type of content online isn't. It is an example of the potential audiences that await media content owners ? particularly when it comes to back catalogues ? if they can just get their content up and available online," said Burmaster.
www.nielsen-online.com www.youtube.co.uk
Topic: TV and video sites' popularity soars (Read 968 times)