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Netflix is Top Pick with Majority of Streaming Customers

Quarantine-life during COVID-19 has put streaming time through the roof—and there's one primary streamer service everyone feels is a must.

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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Bloomberg just reported that last weekend, March 14 and 15, during the first real week of US life under the thumb of coronavirus, streaming time went up a full 20 percent—and that's worldwide, not just in the States. The biggest gain was in Austria, with 44 percent, but the US saw a 7.5 percent increase (data from Wurl Inc.)

Furthermore, the report says that installs of the Netflix app also went up 34 percent in Spain and 57 percent in Italy, the latter of which is hard-hit by COVID-19 cases (data from SensorTower).

All of which underscores the message in this chart (above) from the latest report from HighSpeedInternet.com: Most people would pick Netflix alone if they could only get one video-streaming service. The competition, as it exists today, is primarily Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, which all virtually tie for second place.  Why Netflix? 75 percent said it's all about the content. 

More competition is looming, though. HBO Max, Quibi, and Peacock are coming soon, and there's plenty of free and niche pay-video-streaming services out there, including our Readers' Choice pick for on-demand video streaming—Acorn TV. The report also asked people whether they are overwhelmed already with the choices: 49 percent said yes.

Most people know you can have more than one; 57 percent of the respondents had at least two paid streaming services in use. And considering that the 500 people surveyed for this report all answered these questions pre-COVID-19, that number is likely shooting up already.

So is "piracy," when people use a shared login. 43 percent of respondents already use someone else's credentials to access at least one paid streaming service, something the streaming services had been considering cracking down on. Maybe one "benefit" of the COVID-quarantine is that streaming companies may not care about that as much for now.

The other way people stream for free is to use those excellent free trials. Most last only about a week; 55 percent of respondents said they've used a trial but not signed up for the service. Another COVID-19 inspired piece of "altruism" is that some services are raising their trial period to a full 30 days. All the more time to try it free and never actually sign up.

Further Reading

Video Streaming Service Reviews

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About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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