Screen Digest Reports: Television, Film and Cinema, Video and DVD, Broadband media, Mobile media and Games

TV Technology - STB Market Monitor H1 2013 | 07 Jun 13 tags › Just under 250m digital set-top boxes were shipped in 2012, up 1.7 per cent on the 245m STBs shipped in 2011. The value of the industry also grew by 3.4 per cent to $21.8b, driven primarily by free TV and cable STB revenues and small declines on the pay satellite and IPTV platforms. Pace held on to the number one pay TV set-top box vendor by shipment volumes during 2012, shipping 19.5m units, whilst Cisco became the number one vendor by revenues from pay TV STB shipments. Despite growth in units shipped to 2017, revenues will decline annually through the forecast period.

Multimedia Home Gateways: The future of the digital home | 28 Feb 13 tags › Pay TV operators are transitioning to IP-centric in home distribution architectures to enable them to more effectively deliver content to connected devices such as smart TVs, smartphones and tablets. As a result, the set-top box (STB) is being transformed in to a Multimedia Home Gateway (MHG), integrating traditional STB components alongside those supporting home networking and modem functionality, which are more commonly found inside broadband residential gateways. This is creating new opportunities for both operators and their technology providers, as well as innovative new services and an improved pay TV experience for consumers.

CES 2013 - Summary | 26 Feb 13 tags › The International CES has come to a close once again and TV manufacturers had a chance to showcase their latest products and what will be setting the trend for televisions in 2013 and beyond. This report provided an in-depth look at the TV systems trends, and the underlying supply chain

CES 2013 - Television Technology Trends | 13 Feb 13 tags › The International CES has come to a close once again and TV manufacturers had a chance to showcase their latest products and what will be setting the trend for televisions in 2013 and beyond. This report provides an overview of TV set technologies and features observed during the show.

Dish Network launches new multimedia home gateway | 06 Feb 13 tags › During CES 2013, US satellite operator Dish Network announced 'Hopper with Sling', its second generation Multimedia Home Gateway (MHG). New features of the STB include in-built transcoding functionality and side-loading - a feature enabling users to move recorded DVR content from the Hopper MHG to an external storage medium, such as a tablet, and consume this content without an active internet connection. In addition, Dish is also rolling an ensemble of advanced measurement technologies into both its first and second-generation Hoppers, which will allow advertisers to bid for advertising space in real-time.

TV Technology - CA market monitor H2 2012 | 25 Jan 13 tags › 224m STB CA clients are expected to have been shipped in 2012, down 2 per cent on the 228m shipped in 2011. However, the value of the industry is expected to remain constant at the 2011 level of $2.3b, with stable pay TV CA revenue offsetting declining free TV CA revenues. NDS is expected to hold on to the number one CA vendor by shipment volumes during 2012, shipping 53.5m STB CA clients and is expected to replace Nagravision as the top vendor by revenue in 2012. Both STB CA client shipments and revenues are expected to grow annually to 2016.

Scaling OTT Part 2: The channel conundrum | 24 Jan 13 tags › Our recent analysis of the scaling costs for OTT concluded that platform-agnostic OTT services cannot be scaled to deliver simultaneous mass-audience television at the current cost base. The same scaling issues also apply to single mass-audience channels, but for channels with a low to medium viewing share, scaling for OTT may not be such an issue. OTT streaming can work out cheaper than broadcast for individual low-medium consumption channels. But the current economics of the television business mean that OTT remains an incremental cost rather than a substitutive one. Nonetheless, the cost analysis highlights the potential importance of OTT Unicast streaming as a potential substitute for broadcast once the distribution and installed user base scales. By extension, it highlights a potential new business role for IP infrastructure owners in the channel distribution market.

Black Friday 2012 | 04 Jan 13 tags › Black Friday is a US-based retail promotional period, taking place the day after Thanksgiving. It typically marks the beginning of the Christmas holiday period in the US, as retail outlets around the country compete on pricing to entice consumers to purchase all types of goods. Together with Cyber Monday (the following Monday, which many promotions continue through to), it is the most intense shopping period for consumer electronics in North America, and significantly skews US TV shipments towards the fourth quarter of the year. IHS collected the advertised prices of close to 200 TV models across 10 top US retail outlets for Black Friday and Thanksgiving week 2012. The data was analyzed to produce average sales pricing based on specifications, and to look at the average advertised price discounts.

Cross Platform 3D Movies Market Monitor | 15 Nov 12 tags › This cross-platform 3D Movies Market Monitor examines the addressable market for 3D entertainment across the three key distribution channels for 3D movies: Cinema, Video and Pay TV VoD. It provides an insight into the impact of different growth rates of 3D hardware penetration across key markets as well as analysis of different release strategies for 3D content across all three platforms. The report looks at how the developing market for 3D home entertainment is impacting total 3D movie spending amid a mature market for 3D Cinema. The report also examines the key drivers for 3D movie consumption across the three distribution channels with a detailed focus on the breakdown of 3D movie spending in the US and the big three European markets. A special focus on China is also covered as one of the worlds' fastest growing 3D movie markets.

Scaling OTT: Do the economics stack up? | 11 Sep 12 tags › OTT delivery of TV content is widely touted as the future of television as well as a disruptor of traditional platform-based pay television services. This view fails to take account of the current cost/benefit of delivering OTT with Unicast streaming and of the importance of platform ownership in benefitting from potential cost reductions from IP Multicast or network design. Platform-agnostic OTT services cannot be scaled at the current cost base to service the viewing demands of the average television viewer. Solutions for OTT provides risk removing many of the cost advantages that OTT providers offer over traditional pay TV.

HbbTV in the European television landscape | 19 Jul 12 tags › A number of organisations across Europe, including broadcasters, online video service providers and consumer electronics manufacturers are seeking ways in which to enhance video viewing experiences for consumers, at the same time opening up new revenue opportunities. However, the changing nature of the media environment, in terms of the number of services and devices available to customers requires the development of technical standards, such as HbbTV, which can simplify the process of content delivery for content owners and CE manufacturers and the process of content consumption for customers.

Getting to the UX of the matter: Comcast's X1 shows operator hand in countering Internet competition | 18 Jul 12 tags › Comcast launched it new X1 set-top box in Boston in late May, in the wake of making it the showcase device of the NCTA show in the city earlier that month, which also featured peaks into the future of the pay TV user experience (UX) from many key tech vendors. The key to the future of pay TV competitiveness against over-the-top Internet-based video services is moving the storage and processing of consumer instructions from the set-top box to the cloud where it's no longer limited in its current capabilities or upgrade possibilities by the cost of premises equipment.