Digital Lifescapes

By 2017, two billion mobile phone and media tablet users will watch TV and video on their devices, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. This phenomenon is attributed to the growing popularity of short and easily shared video clips, and the increased global uptake of connected mobile devices with faster processors and better displays. Juniper examined how mobile is increasingly being used as the primary screen for consuming TV and video content among younger demographics, and the seamless integration of streaming services with social networks. They observed that sharing content via smartphones or tablets has become an intuitive experience for many. Furthermore, the success that many streaming providers such as Netflix, have achieved online has led them to offer truly multi-screen experiences via smartphones and tablets. This move has begun to affect the pay-TV business, with the threat of consumers reducing or ending their pay-TV services in favor of interne...

This year, many broadband service providers in developed markets will have to make a strategic choice -- just cut costs and plan to report more pay-TV subscriber losses, or seek ways to offer greater value-added services and make the required investment in infrastructure. Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest market study which delves into service provider strategies for deploying residential gateways, the applications driving their deployments, and their top picks for residential gateway vendors, services, technologies, and associated features. "Operators continue to morph their fixed broadband network strategies to focus not only on the size of the connection to the subscriber, but also on the services and revenue these broadband connections can deliver," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and pay-TV at Infonetics Research . According to the Infonetics assessment, residential gateways are critical to ensuring the successful del...

comScore and the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) released the results of their latest market study, revealing several new findings about the viewing habits of consumers who engage with media brands across multiple touch-points. “While TV remains the leading media channel, once TV-centric media brands now engage with their consumers across a variety of digital touch-points. While this enhances the quality of brand engagement, it also increases the complexity of media planning and analysis by orders of magnitude,” said Joan FitzGerald, comScore VP of TV & Cross-Media Solutions. By leveraging comScore's multi-screen measurement panel, they can reduce this complexity by providing media companies with actionable insights that can be used to determine how to effectively reach their target audiences -- and optimize cross-media planning. Key insights from the market study include: Consumers are Engaging with Brands Across Platforms -- A study of 10 broadcast ...

Increasing consumer adoption of new video entertainment formats -- including video-on-demand (VOD) and viewing on media tablets and smartphones -- will cause up to $22 billion (30 percent) of the U.S. pay-TV advertising market to shift to new formats by 2016. Western Europe will see similar shifts in advertising revenue, while the rest of world will lag in its transition of advertising to these new formats. Regardless, the eventual realignment of all marketer's advertising budgets will have a dramatic impact on the legacy ecosystem. "A shift is already underway in the television advertising marketplace from linear ads inserted by a 24-hour schedule to advanced technologies that will increase the effectiveness of advertisers' spending," says Sam Rosen, senior analyst, digital home, at ABI Research . New technologies are achieving scale within broadcasters' advertising systems, notably audience measurement and tracking, targeted advertising, interactive advert...

Digital video content is delivered to multiple device types over unmanaged networks with fluctuating bandwidth. As a result, video delivery must adapt to the variable bandwidth available on the IP network, the resolution and screen size of the receiving device, and the decoding capability (or limitations) of each device type. Given that multifaceted scenario, a rigid one-size-fits-all solution is really not an option. As more and more video content becomes available via the public Internet and accessible on mobile networks, the need for video transcoding products -- that can ingest content in one format and then output that content into the various video formats -- will grow significantly. According to the latest market study by In-Stat , worldwide revenue for multi-format digital video transcoders will surpass $460 million in 2015. "The industry is at the start of multiscreen delivery and TV Everywhere. Content providers expect in a few years that as much as 75 percent ...

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...