Digital Lifescapes

According to The NPD Group, although viewing movies through new low-cost Internet video on demand (iVOD) subscription services is making significant inroads with a savvy group of informed Americans, legacy cable TV companies are still the first choice for on-demand per-use movie rentals. Led by Comcast in the first half of 2012, 48 percent of all paid video-on-demand (VOD) movie rentals were generated from traditional cable TV service providers. With a 24 percent rental-order growth rate year-over-year, telco VOD is the fastest growing segment of the VOD market, outpacing even the iVOD growth rate of 15 percent. Note, the NPD research refers only to movie rentals that are paid for upon rental -- subscription video rentals and video purchases were not included in this market study. "When it comes to paying for on-demand movies on an a-la-carte basis, cable companies are by far the primary conduit, due in large part to their widespread penetration and usage in Americans’ ...

eMarketer reports that affluent American's relationship with traditional media is in a state of transition, according to data released by The Affluence Collaborative. Moreover, among the younger members of the population, the current status is more negative than positive. On the one hand, affluent internet users are still using print media. More than 20 percent of those with incomes of at least $500,000 spent 11 or more hours per week reading newspapers. This compared with just 6 percent of the general population. Affluents with incomes between $200,000 to $500,000 landed in between, at 9.1 percent. Affluent's consumption of magazines also outstrips that of the general population. According to the same survey, 22 percent of affluent internet users earning $500,000 or more read magazines for 11 or more hours per week, contrasted with 4.5 percent of the general population. Only 11.5 percent of those affluents rarely or never read magazines, while more than 30 percent of th...

Last year, in the fall, the U.S. cable TV service providers decided to work together -- in an unprecedented collaboration effort -- to promote their collective Video-on-Demand (VoD) offerings. They agreed to invest $30 million in an advertising campaign, and they created a dedicated web site (which is now redirected to a Facebook page). If there was increasing pay-TV subscriber interest in their offering, then they would have increased their share of the growing on-demand video market. So, what was the outcome? Across the whole U.S. market, to date about 10,000 people say they "like" the Movies on Demand brand. Clearly, this experiment demonstrates that the traditional pay-TV sector has a very tough road ahead -- as more and more people's video entertainment needs shift away from the channel-centric pay-TV model. Infonetics Research earlier this month released its fourth quarter 2010 (4Q10) Cable, Satellite, and IPTV Video Infrastructure and Subscribers market sha...

Most subscribers of traditional pay-TV services have evolved beyond the channel-centric constraints of legacy video entertainment offerings. As a result, global unit shipments of personal video recorder (PVR) products set a new record in 2009, and that benchmark is expected to be eclipsed by 2010 shipments. Fueled by growing consumer demand to time-shift television programming and thereby avoid the inherent limitations of linear programs on broadcast channels, pay-TV service providers are deploying millions of new PVR products each year. In-Stat is forecasting that the global annual PVR product unit shipments will surpass 50 million by 2014. "Historically, the PVR product segment has been a growth market, even though most unit shipments were restricted to just a few countries," says Mike Paxton, Principal Analyst at In-Stat. Over the past year PVR products are becoming more common in places such as Latin America and Eastern Europe, a development that bodes well for t...

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: ...