By Lance Whitney

Eager to watch the likes of Hulu and YouTube on the big screen, more people are hooking up their TVs to the Internet, says a new report from iSuppli.

A survey of 800 U.S. consumers who bought TVs in January found that 27.5 percent of them have connected their new sets to the Internet, either through the TV itself or via an external device such as a game console or digital video box. That compares with 24.3 percent in December.

Almost 42 percent of the sets that were purchased in January and are now connected to the Internet are Internet-Enabled TVs (IETVs), which can jump online using their own built-in wired or wireless capabilities. That is a huge rise from December when new IETVs accounted for 27.7 percent of the connections. Video game consoles were the next most popular way of accessing the Net through a TV, followed by Blu-ray players, digital video boxes, and PCs.

percentage chart and more here
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