Netflix vs. Hulu - the screen battle

When it comes to audience reach, Netflix owes a debt of gratitude to the video game industry.

A new Nielsen Co. study finds that Netflix users are primarily streaming content to television sets – with half of those customers streaming the service through their Wii, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Meanwhile, Hulu watchers are bypassing watching shows on their TV, with a whopping 89 percent streaming video to their computers – more than double the number of Netflix customers who watch via their PC.

The study found that 25 percent of Netflix subscribers currently use the Wii to stream video content. Among PS3 owners that number falls to 13 percent – and among Xbox 360 users (who have to pay a $60 annual fee on top of Netflix charges) it's just 12 percent.

Only 5 percent of Hulu users watch via the PS3 and Xbox.

The news follows a Nintendo announcement from earlier this month that 1.5 million per day use Netflix on the Wii.

Given the pending sale of Hulu and the customer anger surrounding Netflix's new pricing plan, it will be interesting to see how these numbers shift in the course of the next year.