In pondering a new TV purchase, U.S. consumers want Wi-Fi, better...

In pondering a new TV purchase, U.S. consumers want Wi-Fi, better sound quality, built-in tuners and embedded storage, but they have little interest in 3D, voice activation or gesture control, Tamaryn Pratt, president of Quixel Research, told the Home Technology Specialists of America conference Tuesday. Quixel surveyed 1,169 adult TV owners in June and July and found 73 percent of respondents would be extremely interested in Wi-Fi connectivity, followed by 68 percent showing similar interest in built-in tuners, 61 percent for an ultra-HD picture such as 4K, and 58 percent for a built-in DVR. Half of respondents showed strong interest in syncing content from devices to TVs and 44 percent indicated strong interest in using a tablet or smartphone as their remote control. Among the features with the least appeal to consumers, with roughly a third of users indicating strong interest, were 3D, gesture control and voice activation. At the bottom of the list, 18 percent of respondents showed strong interest in a battery-powered portable TV, Pratt said. In the survey, Quixel found that Apple users showed a higher rate of feature preference than non-Apple owners. Almost 700 respondents were Apple users. Half of Apple users were extremely interested in using their iPhone or iPad to control their TV, compared with 44 percent of non-Apple users. On cord cutting, Quixel found that cable-cutting is not generally occurring among young people. Older cable customers with lower income, however, reported decreasing their level of content from a cable or satellite provider roughly twice as much as the rest of the population, Pratt said. Mid- and premium-level customers had increased their subscriptions to a small degree, she said.