Digital Lifescapes

The global streaming industry has spent the better part of a decade chasing subscriber counts as the primary metric of success. That era is now formally over. New market data from Omdia confirms that the industry has crossed a decisive threshold; one that shifts the competitive playing field from growth-at-all-costs to monetization discipline. For senior executives navigating media, advertising, and technology strategy, the implications extend well beyond entertainment. A Historic Revenue Crossover Online video revenue increased 13.5 percent to $176 billion in 2025, while pay-TV revenue declined 4 percent to $170 billion; marking the first time in the industry's history that streaming has surpassed legacy pay-TV in revenue terms. This is not a rounding error or a statistical artifact; it represents the culmination of more than a decade of structural disruption to the traditional broadcast and cable TV model. Global subscriptions to online video services reached 2.24 billion by the ...

Digital TV and online video has seen the battle between Over the Top (OTT) providers and traditional television networks pushed to the forefront. In order to differentiate themselves, and reduce the need to rely on expensive content partnerships, OTTs will produce more of their own entertainment content. According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) services -- from leading providers such as Netflix and Amazon -- will drive a surge in OTT revenues to reach $120 billion in 2022, and that's up from $64 billion in 2017. In this environment, the traditional expensive bundle of pay-TV services will surely continue their decline. Original Content Market Development The upside market opportunity for the innovative low-cost video entertainment providers is significant. The in-depth market research also uncovered that over a quarter of global households will eventually subscribe to SVOD services by 2022. The new research foun...

By end 2012, North America and Western Europe had effectively made the transition from legacy analog broadcast technology to digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasts. The next milestone year (2015) was established by the ITU and a number of countries in Eastern Europe and Middle-East Africa are hoping to satisfy this goal. With a later start to digital services a number of countries in these regions are starting with DVB-T2, avoiding the conundrum facing established DVB-T markets looking to migrate to the newer technology. "If remaining analog shutoff timelines go largely as planned, we expect over 18 million DVB-T2 STBs will ship in 2015," said Michael Inouye, senior analyst at ABI Research . Other potential factors, like spectrum reallocation for mobile broadband in Western Europe, might increase the demand for DVB-T2 boxes, but this likely won't be a significant factor until the latter half -- if not past the 2018 forecasting window, according to the lat...

The primary London 2012 Olympic games are over, but they're clearly not forgotten. Several market studies highlighted the multi-platform or multi-device media consumption trends. There were some interesting regional variations within the market study findings. As an example, according to a pre-Olympics market study by Ipsos , while 65 percent of survey respondents say they would be watching the competition on TV, 23 percent were rooting for their countries via the Internet -- a number that swells to 34 percent in APAC countries and 43 percent in BRIC countries. Six percent of people said they would watch at least part of the Olympics on mobile devices and 4 percent intended to watch on their media tablets. Ipsos said that they expected these results to rise as people become more comfortable viewing smaller screens and choose to watch in real-time, rather than coming home to hours and hours of recorded video. In fact, 20 percent -- 31 percent in APAC countries and 37 perc...

The transition from older-style can-type television channel tuners to silicon TV tuners finally began to occur in 2010. Today, the top TV set manufacturers are actually putting silicon tuners directly on their main TV chassis boards -- and many ODMs are using can-type modules that contain silicon tuners and demodulators. Moreover, new broadcast TV applications are helping to increase demand. According to the latest market study by In-Stat , mobile video services in China, Brazil, and the U.S. are creating new growth markets for all-digital mobile tuners that will drive the value of silicon TV tuner shipments to $750 million in 2015. “Silicon tuners have finally turned the corner in the battle with traditional can-type modules,” says Gerry Kaufhold, Research Director at In-Stat. The major name-brand TV set manufactures have been convinced of the performance, reliability and roadmaps presented by the silicon tuner vendors. An epochal shift away from old-style cans is now ful...

Over-the-air (OTA) broadcast high definition television deployment is growing across the globe, as more nations retire the analog TV transmission infrastructure and convert over to digital. Here in the U.S. market, the video image quality of digital broadcast TV has to be seen to be believed – it’s a vast improvement over the old system. That being said, I’ve discovered that most indoor TV antennas don’t perform well. I live on high ground not too far from the communication towers where the broadcast TV signals are transmitted. So, theoretically, we should achieve outstanding broadcast digital TV reception. Quest for a Superior Broadcast TV Antenna Unfortunately, that has not been the case, until now. My prior attempts at finding a suitable indoor antenna for digital TV broadcasts proved to be very problematic. Some indoor antennas are very particular about placement – the proximity of the antenna relative to the TV set, and the other surroundings. Many require tuning – careful...

Mobile Interactive Group (MIG)  released the results of a recent market study about the trends and opportunities in participation TV (P-TV) services -- in particular, interactive social channels across global broadcast television markets. Their research uncovered key technological and behavioural insights into the entire P-TV value chain -- from the types of devices that consumers use to interact with TV shows -- such as media tablet, internet, mobile, apps, SMS and fixedline broadband -- how they multi-task with them while watching TV and over which payment channels they prefer to purchase participation services such as voting and competitions. The study considered the role of mash-ups between established social media channels, in particular Twitter and Facebook, with broadcast TV interactivity -- concluding that there's a potential new business model. MIG calls that model "Social Participation TV." Key findings from the recent MIG market study include: Mobile ...

Broadcast television content storage is undergoing a period of dramatic change, as TV stations move to file-based workflows and network play-out centers move to HD and 3D services. U.S. TV broadcasters are set to launch local mobile DTV services, and all content needs to be re-purposed for new devices like iPads, tablets, and smartphones. These evolutionary applications will help push the market for U.S. broadcast storage and news production systems to an annual value of $368 million during 2015, according to the latest market study by In-Stat . "The nature of professionally produced television is undergoing fundamental changes. Multi-screen content delivery networks and services will eventually push a great deal of professional content into the cloud," says Gerry Kaufhold, Principal Analyst at In-Stat. Even for local TV stations that produce their own talk shows, news, sports, advertising, and specialty programming, the changes in consumer behavior require that cont...

Television services are evolving in Australia, according to the latest market study by BuddeComm . Under the name Freeview, the free-to-air television operators have delivered new digital channels in 2010/11 in both SD and HD formats. Viewer numbers are increasing and will continue to increase as the analogue transmission is switched off across Australia. Digital transmission first commenced back in 2001 and in 2011 celebrates ten years of operations with more Australians now enjoying the extra features and channels that are available. Their success is putting pressure on the traditional pay-TV industry. The analogue switch-off that commenced in 2010 is progressing throughout Australia with the final signals to be turned off by end-2013. The formation of Freeview along with the expansion of the network's online and cross platform offerings are providing enriched viewing experience. By early 2011 total digital TV penetration had reached 75 percent across Australia and the re...

Last year, interacting with others online about TV content was named one of the ten emerging social applications by MIT Technology Review. Why? The activity could leverage online services, such as Facebook and Twitter, with the potential to rebuild fragmented TV audiences. With Facebook now having over 500 million active users, and Twitter over 100 million, socail media has gained significant mass. Moreover, Facebook revenue is approaching $1.1 billion in 2010, about double its 2009 revenue. Many consumers are using social media to connect with entertainment, like movies and TV, thereby creating the new product category -- often called Social TV. It's about using social media applications with a tablet or smartphone while simultaneously watching video content. Already, Nielsen has reported that 59 percent of U.S. Internet users browse the Internet and watch TV simultaneously. And, this number is sure to grow, especially among younger consumers -- who have grown up with smartp...