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Archive for the 'Research' Category

Higher TV viewing: DVRs may be the reason

December 17, 2009 by Barry Flynn

The UK regulator, Ofcom, has released international comparison data showing that the UK witnessed the highest average increase in TV watching during 2008 across 11 major economies, up by 3.2% to 3.8 hours a day. Ofcom also noted that the UK remained the country with the highest proportion of households with digital TV on their main set, at 88%.

It has generally been assumed that TV viewing is a counter-cyclical activity, because in a recession, consumers tend to cut down on going out and are therefore more likely to stay at home watching TV. However, the recession only began half-way through 2008, and although it was deeper in the UK than most other economies, this may not tell the whole story.

Ofcom’s second data-point suggests an additional factor: as digital TV penetration has increased in the UK, so has penetration of digital video recorders (DVRs) - and owners of DVRs watch more TV. Evidence from BSkyB’s Skyview panel suggests that users of DVRs watch in the region of 17% more television than their ‘linear’ counterparts.

Farncombe’s calculations (based on Ofcom’s quarterly digital TV reports), show that the number of DVRs in the UK (excluding Freesat) increased by 60% in 2008, putting DVRs in nearly a third of UK homes at the end of last year. This is no doubt contributing to the TV viewing increase noted by Ofcom.

This underlines the positive contribution on-demand consumption can make to viewing-levels increasingly under pressure in a traditional linear broadcast environment.

Posted in Digital Cable, Digital Satellite, Digital Terrestrial and Research. 0 Comments

IMS Research: 65m homes worldwide able to watch Internet video on TV sets last year

May 13, 2009 by Barry Flynn

Some interesting stats and predictions from Texas-based IMS Research in their new study Market Opportunities for Internet Video to the TV.

IMS reckons that an estimated 65 million households worldwide had the capability of viewing Internet video on their television set at the end of 2008, up 134% on 2007. The ‘vast majority’ of these were doing so via a game console or ‘proprietary device’, notes IMS, but expects that to change in the future: “it is expected that households using a PC to deliver Internet video to the TV set via a media centre PC and a media extender (or digital media adapter) will see an 85% CAGR through 2013 reaching nearly 60 million households by that time,” says the research firm.

Shane Walker, research manager and author of the study, puts that down to projected price-falls in Windows Media Centre devices, media centres in general, and extenders, with media centre costs falling by as much as 15% annually during the next five years.

After 2013, however, the story changes, as more advanced Internet TV functionality is delivered by digital TV set-top boxes. This will cause a drop in demand for media extenders, although IMS believes that for one category - media centres connected to the TV via a device other than an extender - demand will continue to grow, and they will slowly replace DVRs.

On the whole, Connected TV thinks these are reasonable scenarios, although perhaps the role of the hybrid, IP-connected set-top box is not accorded enough importance given current developments in Europe and elsewhere. Hybrid DTT STBs should arrive in the UK in quantity next year, and there are already substantial numbers of STBs in the UK with at least theoretical broadband capability - namely the later BSkyB PVRs and current Freesat boxes.

It is true, however, that the notion of offering the full panoply of Internet-based, over-the-top video services to the TV through a set-top box is fraught with practical and technical difficulties, so if IMS is talking about that type of advanced capability (rather than a walled garden that might, for example, only offer one or two services such as the BBC’s iPlayer), a 2013 timeline may not be that unreasonable.

Also, the idea that the TV-connected media centre might eventually replace the PVR in this type of environment is not that implausible. By the time you have added a hard drive, IP capability and home networking features to a set-top box, what you have is pretty close to a PC-derived media centre - so why reinvent the wheel? That is likely to be one of the central battlegrounds between traditional pay-TV operators and the ‘over-the-top’ video providers in the coming years.

Posted in Broadband, Digital Satellite, Digital Terrestrial, Research and TV-over-Internet. 0 Comments

Informa: IPTV nudges 20m global homes as fibre approaches 50m

March 19, 2009 by Barry Flynn

Ahead of next week’s IPTV World Forum in London, organizer Informa Telecoms & Media has announced the results of its latest research into broadband and multi-channel TV subscription numbers, headlining the fact that FTTx (fibre) subscriptions are approaching 50m, with IPTV nudging 20m.

According to research Informa will conclude this month, global fixed broadband subscriptions stood at 422 million at the end of 2008, adding nearly 68 million subscriptions in the year and 16 million in the final quarter.

The biggest access technology remains DSL (65% of the total), but FTTx (11%) registered its biggest in year gain to date, adding over 11 million subscriptions - almost exactly the same number as cable broadband (21%).

The growth of FTTx is in part explained by robust growth in Asia-Pacific, says Informa: the region added 20% more subscriptions in 2008 than in 2007. In addition, nine of the world’s 10 largest FTTx operators are in the region.

Western Europe, meanwhile, has seen broadband growth stagnate, as all but five of its 30 countries now exceed a household penetration level of 50% and 20 countries enjoy penetration of over 60%.China, where broadband subscriptions grew by 21% over 2008 to reach 82 million subscriptions, passed the USA mid-year to become the world’s largest fixed broadband market, though it still has a household penetration level of below 20%.

Significantly, of the four main multichannel TV platforms, IPTV and digital terrestrial (DTT) are increasing their share of the market and now hold 10% and 3 30% of the global market, respectively.

The research, based on a continuous programme of research covering 730 fixed broadband (xDSL, cable broadband, FTTx, LAN, satellite and fixed wireless) operators in 160 countries and nearly 100 IPTV operators in 50 countries, will be presented in an opening address at the IPTV World Forum at Olympia, London, next week.

Farncombe Technology, which hosts this blog, will be conducting an IPTV Masterclass on IPTV Deployment in association with the Forum.

Posted in Broadband, IPTV and Research. 0 Comments

SES Astra’s Astra2Connect service to use satellite to bridge UK’s broadband gaps

January 28, 2009 by Barry Flynn

The potential universe for broadband access via satellite in the UK could be as high as 800,000 households, according to Mike Locke, the man in charge of VSAT, Internet & Special Projects at satellite equipment distributor Eurosat.

Speaking yesterday at a UK launch event for satellite operator SES Astra’s Astra2Connect two-way broadband satellite product, Locke said that while BT estimated there were 100,000 UK homes which would never get ADSL, with Ofcom reckoning a higher figure of 200,000, private research calculated there was a much higher figure of around 800,000 homes with a poor broadband connection. “The true figure [for the potential market] is somewhere in between,” said Locke.

Mike Chandler, managing director of Astra UK, was at pains to point out that the Astra2Connect service, for which Eurosat is the UK distributor, was intended to be complementary to terrestrial broadband, not in competition with it. It was neither as cheap nor as fast, Chandler conceded: what the product sought to do was “to bridge the gap for people unable to get broadband.”

The Astra2Connect proposition is tiered by speed, with 4 service-levels available between 256KBit/s and 2MBit/s downstream, ranging from £19.99/m to £74.99/m. Upstream speeds to the satellite (Astra 1E/3A at 23.5oE) range from 64KBit/s to 128KBit/s. The kit, including the dish, special LNB and satellite modem, is priced at £299.99, with a current install offer of £100. Given the proximity of Astra1E/3A to the UK-focussed Astra2 series at 28.2oE, the dish is also able to receive BSkyB or Freesat satellite channels.

The service is already available in Europe, and currently has close to 50,000 customers, said Chandler, with the most popular tier being the 1MBit/s one.

The service was demonstrated live at the event, and successfully coped with embedded video streamed from Internet websites. The opportunity to test how the BBC i-Player might perform was not available, though, due to the fact that the range of IP addresses assigned to the service are currently Luxembourgeois ones, which are automatically barred from access by the BBC.

Locke maintained that the true performance speed in the packages matched the advertised one very closely, and produced a graph demonstrating an average download speed of around 800/900KBit/s for a four-day test of the 1MBit/s service. This compared very favourably with similar tests carried out on terrestrial broadband packages, he said.

The Lyngsat website shows the Astra2Connect service occupying three transponders at 23.5oE, potentially offering a throughput of 40MBit/s each, according to Chandler. A fair use policy for the service was deployed to ensure that actual speeds matched advertised ones as closely as possible.

As for future developments, a VoIP service is in the pipeline, but there are no intentions to use the service to deliver IPTV. Both Chandler and Locke suggested it would make little commercial sense to do so given the ability of the installation to offer hundreds of satellite TV channels alongside a broadband service.

The Astra approach contrasts with rival satellite operator Eutelsat’s claims that it will be able to use its forthcoming Ka-Band capacity to offer IPTV as a possible service.

Connected TV is sceptical about such claims given a true IPTV service’s requirement to devote around 1.5MBit/s to each active customer, which would very rapidly use up available transponder capacity and would be very expensive to deliver.

However, using satellite as a fill-in broadband service for those forced otherwise to rely on dial-up Internet access seems a reasonably attractive option given the sort of prices Astra is charging. Previously, the customer premises equipment required for satellite broadband was in the £600-700 range.

The service could face problems if it becomes very popular, however, since if using the same number of transponders, Astra would gradually need to tighten its fair use policy. This could be solved by bringing additional transponders onstream, but the question then becomes to what extent do you allow service levels to deteriorate before adding the additional capacity.

Posted in Broadband, IPTV, Research and TV-over-Internet. 1 Comment

Digital TV set-top market to defy down-turn, will grow at 10% this year - IMS Research

January 27, 2009 by Barry Flynn

A new report from Texas-based IMS Research has concluded that the digital set-top box market is one of the few segments that is defying the economic downturn, and predicts that volumes are expected to grow substantially through 2009 and 2010.

IMS argues that because TV is a cheap form of quality entertainment, it is one of the last costs to be cut by western households, while adoption in developing countries is continuing at unprecedented rates.

Accordingly, set-top box shipments in 2009 will see almost 10% growth over the previous year, the company predicts. Stephen Froehlich, an analyst in the company’s consumer electronics research group, comments that “Television remains one of the most economic forms of entertainment available and is traditionally one of the last expenses to be cut in tough times, making set-top boxes one of the few growth areas to be found in consumer electronics at the moment.”

The relative buoyancy of the set-top box market is also down to the fact that digital TV services are becoming available in new territories, says IMS. “Digital TV services, including HD, are also providing consumers the option of staying home to watch movies and sporting events, rather than paying for tickets and concessions at the theatre or sports field.” The company is forecasting that worldwide digital TV households will still see 20% growth over 2008.

However, there is a downside, the company says: annual set-top revenues are already near their peak, which it is forecasting to be $19 billion in 2011 - while prices of most types of set-top box are expected to decline by more than 10% each year.

“While there are some very real opportunities out there for suppliers to this market, they are getting harder and harder to find,” says Froehlich.

Posted in Research. 0 Comments