For Internet TV lovers more used to watching content on the big screen, the good news is that sales of Internet enabled television sets growing rapidly according to reports from Quixel Research. This matches our prediction of Inbuilt Internet TV becoming the big thing for 2009

In the second quarter of 2009, the revenue from inside the US from televisions that have built in Internet capabilities grew 40% to over $1 billion. This compares to $776 million made from these tv’s in the first quarter of 2009.

In terms of unit sales, shipments rose 70% to 620,000 units, compared to 365,000 units in the previous quarter, Quixel said. Unit sales in the first half of 2009 exceeded the total for 2008, which was 985,000 units.

These figures show that consumers are hungry for internet content on their big screen televisions and to access Web services. This can be to watch tv streams and videos from Youtube (see Youtube XL release for tv viewing) and Hulu or rent movies from Netflix. The sets also allow integration with social network sites and other internet features whilst watching traditional TV.

“The timing is right for consumer adoption of connected TVs,” Quixel analyst Tamaryn Pratt said in a statement. “The majority of people already have high-speed broadband in their homes, and with the increased availability of premium content via the Internet… manufacturers are capitalizing on consumers’ desire to watch programming on a much larger screen than their computer monitors.”

Quixel has estimated around 15-20% of TVs with built in internet capabilities are actually connected to the web in households. However this percentage is expected to grow rapidly by the end of 2009.

Internet connected plasma televisions in the second quarter showed the largest quarterly growth rate at 202% in terms of unit sales and 163% in revenue, which rose to $293 million from $111 million. Unit sales of connected LCD TVs rose by 40% and and revenue was up 20% to $795 million.

The rising trend in accessing Web based content on large screen TV’s is increasing the amount of content supplied by Internet companies. The big pay tv players such as Amazon, Netflix, and Blockbuster have all announced additional TV and movie content from major entertainment studios.

The Cable companies are also hotly pursuing an internet based pay television model and of course ther is plenty of free content to watch vis these tv sets as well. You can be pretty certain that soon all tv sets will come internet enabled further growing the internet tv sector.

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