Digital Lifescapes

As consumer electronics and video entertainment industry analysts are preparing to descend upon Las Vegas once again, to attend the International CES next week, perhaps now is the perfect time to consider the outlook for the evolving pay-TV sector. Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its latest global market study and associated report, which tracks pay-TV subscribers and video equipment sold to telco IPTV, cable and satellite television service providers. "Pay-TV providers are sweating their existing encoding assets as they wait for the next generation of platforms that support HEVC (high efficiency video coding) so they can reduce current bandwidth requirements while preparing for ultra-definition TV, such as 4K," said Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay-TV at Infonetics Research . According to the Infonetics global market assessment, demand for contribution encoders among broadcasters will remain steady through 2017, with increases ...

The highly efficient approach that Google applies to storing and serving digital video content is apparently influencing the legacy video distribution value-chain to evolve. Proving once again, that necessity is the mother of invention -- particularly when meaningful new competition forces an industry to change. According to In-Stat , traditional Video-on-Demand (VoD) services, and their typical siloed video services currently use a great deal of proprietary -- or industry-specific (i.e. very expensive) -- equipment. They see traditional and pay-TV service providers migrating to more efficient Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and data center models based on server virtualization. In-Stat believes that this migration enables content portability and will have a direct impact on equipment vendors, service providers and content owners. Meaning, this will be disruptive to the legacy status-quo. "Increasing usage of over-the-top (OTT) Internet video is driving traditional TV service pro...

Over the next five years, the worldwide value of Content Delivery Network (CDN) services will pass $2 Billion annually by 2011 and continue growing thereafter, according to the latest market study by In-Stat. Growth in CDNs is a result of increasing usage of over-the-top internet video, as well as their flexibility to manage content for delivery through multiple delivery channels to multiple device types. "Over the coming years, In-Stat believes that Data Centers and CDNs will become the dominant approach for sourcing everything on demand," says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst. This will not only enable owners and creators to have more control over their creations, but also provide viewers with more choices in programming and delivery methods. The question on my mind -- will broadband service providers actively pursue this opportunity to create a two-sided business model, where they offer content owners new hosting services? In-Stat's market study found the following: ...

New video content hosting technology -- known as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and Next generation Data Centers -- will dramatically change the business model and the user experience for video delivery services, according to the latest market study by In-Stat. CDN provisioned Video-on-Demand (VoD) will allow content owners more control over their creations and provide viewers with more choices in programming and delivery methods. "As Content Providers build or out-source their own data centers, they will be in charge of every aspect of their content," says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst. "We will see flexible, complex, and creative ways to derive every last penny out of every piece of content." In-Stat's market study found the following: - Over the next five years, the worldwide value of Content Delivery Network services will nearly double, to more than $2 billion. - The Information Technology (IT) industry is aggressively driving forward with cost-cut...

The range of connected consumer electronics devices delivering over-the-top (OTT) video into the living room is growing. Device types include digital media adapters (DMAs), pay-TV set top boxes, Blu-ray player or recorders, HDTVs and media-center PCs. However, networked video game consoles are currently the most utilized devices for bringing web video to the TV -- and will remain so through 2013. By 2013, over 10.7 million consoles will be used as Web-to-TV mediation devices in the U.S., according the the latest In-Stat market study. While still at the early adoption stages, the impact of bringing web video to the TV will bring both opportunity and threats to a range of companies in the traditional electronics and TV markets. By 2013, the revenue from Web-to-TV streaming services will grow to $2.9 billion. "Currently Web video is largely additive to traditional TV revenue streams," says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. "However, ultimately web video to the TV will force a ...

According to Light Reading, the arrival of high-definition (HD) video content delivered over the Internet will force significant changes in how network operators and content owners distribute video. It could result in a fundamental restructuring of the ISP business. "Consumers now expect to find video content on the Internet, and expectations of high-quality video are rising. But, moving very large files to end-users places huge demands on existing infrastructures," notes Simon Sherrington, research analyst for Light Reading. "There's an emerging battle between CDNs and P2P upstarts for control of the primary relationship with video content owners." The choices made by content owners regarding their distribution partners will be governed by a wide range of factors, including how they have already encoded their content, the extent of their back catalogs, the likely size of the audiences for their content, the intended reach for their content, and the nature of th...

Broadband service providers (BSP) that deploy product data management systems to create telco "service factories" will have a better chance of surviving in a next-generation services environment that will feature tens of thousands of unique services, according to the latest market study by Light Reading. Their report details and analyzes the effects that product data management systems will have on the delivery of next-generation telco services. It explores and outlines how network operators are likely to implement product data management systems (PDMSs), and how the PDMS is likely to be integrated into larger frameworks -- such as service delivery platforms (SDPs) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives. "PDMS is emerging as a linchpin application that network operators can deploy to create a kind of automated telco service factory where customers can configure products with the features they want, much as they can customize a computer order online today,...

Consumption of both ad-supported and purchased broadband video will grow strongly over the next few years as direct and third-party distribution channels proliferate to give consumers more ways to access the content, according to a new study from ABI Research. The growing reach of new distribution models will expand the total consumer base of Internet video consumers from roughly 300 million today to nearly one billion by 2012. This growth will create a demand for new and evolved monetization models that will help create a multi-billion dollar industry in the coming years. "Who pays for video online will largely be determined by who foots the bill through existing models," says research director Michael Wolf. "For broadcast television, including prime-time TV content, we anticipate that ad support will be the primary engine of monetization as this content moves online. Movie content new to the home video window will be largely consumer pay-supported. User-generated conte...