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Pay-TV Services will Grow by 12 Percent in 2013

The traditional pay-TV services market continues to evolve, as over-the-top video streaming providers expand their offerings across the globe. The competition is also prompting the legacy pay-TV companies to invest in infrastructure for new capabilities.

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its Broadcast and Streaming Video Equipment and Pay TV Subscribers market study, which tracks pay-TV subscribers and video equipment sold to telco IPTV, cable, and satellite service providers.

"With competition and content heating up, pay-TV providers are transitioning their traditional, broadcast-focused video processing environments to ones that can ingest, process, deliver, and decode video content from multiple sources," said Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics Research.

At the same time, content owners and studios are also adjusting their workflow and video output to support multiscreen and streaming services.

The net result of these transitions is steady investment in the platforms necessary to optimize video streams for a growing list of end devices and formats.

Highlights from the latest market study include:
  • The global broadcast and streaming video equipment market topped $2 billion in 2012 and is forecast by Infonetics to grow about 12 percent in 2013.
  • Projected to grow by more than a third by 2017, adaptive bitrate (ABR) origin and packaging servers are key components in the efficient delivery of over-the-top (OTT) content, especially as more pay-TV providers and content delivery networks move to ABR streaming.
  • More and more, transcoders are being used to prepare linear broadcast and file-based content for distribution directly to subscribers.
  • Telco IPTV subscribers have the highest 2012-2017 annual growth rate (17 percent) of any pay-TV subscriber segment.

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