Digital Lifescapes

Video entertainment in the typical American home has changed dramatically during the last few years. Streaming subscription video content to a TV set is now commonplace. There are several market drivers that are apparent, as a result of the consumer transition to over-the-top (OTT) video. The incumbent service providers had initially ignored the trend. Pay-TV providers had hoped that the baby-boomers would continue to tolerate perpetual price increases. Television broadcasters assumed that millennials would simply learn to accept the twenty minutes of commercial advertising that interrupts every hour of TV entertainment. In hindsight, both of these scenarios actually helped to fuel the introduction, market development and ongoing adoption of alternative -- often much lower-cost and more appealing -- video entertainment offerings. "Ownership of connected televisions and streaming media players is accelerating while the availability of streaming content is simultaneously expan...

What happened to the legacy video entertainment market in America, and why has HBO announced that they will -- for the first time -- choose to bypass the traditional pay-TV distribution channel to reach new customers? While residential broadband internet access will soon reach 100 million households in the U.S. market, legacy pay-TV subscription services have already peaked and are in a slow decline. According to the latest market study by The Diffusion Group (TDG), during the next few months, and for the first time in history, the number of home broadband subscriptions will surpass the number of home pay-TV subscriptions. In September 2014, TDG surveyed 500 adult broadband users that did not subscribe to a traditional home pay-TV service -- such as those offered by cable, satellite or telco network operators. Based upon the TDG market assessment, they uncovered that 14 percent of adult broadband users do not use a legacy pay-TV service -- that's up from 9 percent in 2011, ...

Here in the United States, when high-definition television sets were first introduced in the marketplace there was a very limited supply of HD video content available. Moreover, even today, most American pay-TV service providers still offer a modest amount of HD-quality live broadcast or archived video content. Ironically, if you're interested in access to an abundance of better quality high resolution video content, streaming it from the Internet (as an example, via HBO GO) or using a Blu-ray disc player is still the best approach for HDTV owners. So, what's the overall market outlook? According to the latest market study by ABI Research, 4K or Ultra HD is the future -- but it's going to be a market development marathon, not a sprint to higher resolutions. And, while 1080p TV screens are the norm and mobile screen resolutions continue to climb, plenty of streamed HD content is still distributed in 720p or lower. Over-the-top (OTT) video entertainment services such ...