Over-the-top video passed an important symbolic milestone this year, the NPD Group reported yesterday. The percentage of consumers who say their TV is the primary screen for watching web-delivered video has now surpassed the percentage who say their PC or laptop is still the primary device for online video.

According to NPD’s Digital Video Outlook Report, 45 percent of U.S. consumers say the TV is their primary device for streamed video as of mid-2012, compared to 33 percent a year earlier. At the same time, the number of consumers who rely on the PC as their primary streaming device dropped from 48 percent to 31 percent.

While 10 percent of U.S. households now have at least one connected TV, according to the researchers, most of the growth in viewing web video on the TV has been the result of increased use of game consoles and connected set-top boxes to bring web video into the living room. Forty-seven percent of game console owners say they use the devices to watch streamed video, while 21 percent of Blu-ray Disc owners use it for streaming.  Oddly, only 62 percent of consumers who own a streaming media player (Roku, Boxee, Apple TV) say they use the device to acquire web-based content, raising the question of what the rest of them are doing with the devices. Ditto the 38 percent of households with a direct connection from a PC or laptop to the TV.

Reaching the latest milestone by itself is not likely to have any substantive impact on current business arrangements within the TV industry. But the data do give substance to the heretofore nebulous concept of “over-the-top” video. The web is clearly evolving into a viable and popular channel for delivering TV and other types of content directly to the TV, where it competes for screen time with content delivered by traditional means (cable, satellite, over-the-air).