E-commerce Times

TiVo scored a major victory in its lawsuit against Dish Network and EchoStar. Dish Network maintained it had made a "herculean effort" to redesign its product to avoid infringing on TiVo's patents, but the court didn't buy it. Service providers are "struggling to develop a solution that's quite as intuitive as TiVo has turned out to be," said Parks Associates' Kurt Scherf.

Indeed, service providers are "struggling to develop a solution that's quite as intuitive as TiVo has t ...read more

"It will be a defining service for Walmart," Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, told the E-Commerce Times. "Walmart wants to go beyond selling products, like DVDs, and start providing incremental revenue."

Walmart is now hoping to regain its footing and define the retail space for online video, Scherf said.

"We'll see other retailers look at this," Scherf said. Target, for example, might partner with an online video provider instead of ...read more

"I think it may be a smart approach, actually -- acknowledgment that in order to make money but to keep the risks relatively low, they're targeting distinct niches of consumers that may be smaller in number but more willing to pay money," Parks Associates Digital Media Analyst, Kurt Scherf told the E-Commerce Times. "The producers of the independent stuff may be much more anxious to find high-quality distribution partners. So I think that's first, and then you build out your cat ...read more

Amazon is trying to "make sure it's ahead of the curve before Apple gets involved," agreed Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst with Parks Associates.

This move "brings them more smaller publishers" and is likely an attempt to "lock in the 'long tail' of the content," Scherf told the E-Commerce Times. "It's a volume and scale issue, which of course Amazon already knows well."

In the bigger picture, Amazon and others are "facing the challenge that Apple set t ...read more

"The connected home" is a term used frequently but often defined ambiguously. For Parks Associates, the connected home is comprised of the following elements:

1.access services, including broadband, television, landline communications, and mobile services

2.content and value-added services that complement the core access services

3.Devices that connect to these access services and each other, creating a network that can share content and resources throughout the home

Park ...read more

From Parks Associates' view, the presence of a versatile gateway, once deployed, allows operators to enable multiple services without having to invest incremental capital expenditure in additional devices. In addition, by retaining the RG within their domain, operators can manage the install and activation processes in a manner that minimizes later support costs.

From the article, "The Hybridization of the Set-Top Box" by Jayant Dasari

The growing popularity of online video has become the tipping point for advanced CE (consumer electronics) in the home. Consumer interest and demand for this content -- from user-generated videos of stealthy cats to streams of classic 1980s shows like "Airwolf" -- have prompted service providers and CE manufacturers to expand outward on the possibilities once video is tied and intertwined with other signals coming into the home.

Already almost 30 million adults in the U.S. a ...read more

What will be the factors that determine the success or failure of connected entertainment devices? HDTVs and set-top boxes with the ability to directly access Web content from providers like Blockbuster and Netflix are hitting the market, but what will it take to make consumers tune in, and what will content owners need to see before they allow their shows and films to run through these channels?

From the article, "How Internet TV Gear Can Stay in the Picture" by Kurt Scherf