DVR view: Fast forward or slo-mo? -- Industry observers and research firms say that digital video recorders are popular in the U.S., but there�s little they agree on beyond that, such as how quickly DVRs will reach critical mass and what effect the commercial-skipping gadgets will have on the TV advertising industry. Case in point: Research and consulting firm Accenture predicted late last week that DVRs will reach into 40 percent of U.S. homes by 2009, up from 8 percent today. Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, meanwhile, says in its latest five-year forecast that only 23.6 percent of U.S. households will boast DVRs in 2009. Accenture says up to 50 percent of all commercials are skipped in homes with DVRs, while PwC, citing a CBS study, says that 64 percent of DVR viewers skip all commercials, and 26 percent skip most of them. Accenture says that ad skipping will result in a slower-growing TV ad industry, while PwC�s �Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2005-2009� report concludes that, �on balance, we do not expect DVRs to have a significant impact on television advertising.�
The prevailing narrative around artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of relentless scale. Bigger models, bigger clusters, bigger budgets. The assumption, largely unchallenged until recently, was that raw parameter count translated directly into competitive advantage. New research from Omdia suggests it's time to retire that assumption. According to the latest market study by Omdia, parameter growth in frontier AI models has slowed to around 5 percent annually since 2021, a stark contrast to the more than hundredfold expansion seen between 2019 and 2021. Enterprise AI Market Development For executives who have been making infrastructure and investment decisions based on the assumption that AI would keep demanding ever-larger, ever-more-expensive hardware, this finding deserves serious attention. The race to the top of the model size leaderboard has, at least for now, plateaued. Crucially, Omdia's analysts are not reading this as an AI winter. Alexander Harrowell, senior pri...