CE Pro

Koster joined Lowe’s in 2007 as director, new business development and in 2010 became COO of the Iris group.

According to Lowe’s, “Mick plans to expand the current model by adding many more devices to the Iris ecosystem, developing more value-added services that solve real problems for users, and ultimately aligning Iris with other Lowe’s assets to create a truly integrated home management system.”

Kristen (Kris) Bowring remains at Lowe’s as director of business and chan ...read more

Whatever the objections – a lack of content, premium prices, no universal support for high dynamic range (HDR) – if you’re going to buy a large flat screen, you may as well buy a 4K Ultra HD model.
First off, people are already buying, said Tim Alessi, director of new product development for LG, during a 4K UHD panel discussion at Parks Associates Connections conference this week in San Francisco.

Through March of this year, he said, over 10 percent of LCD TVs 50 inches ar ...read more

Alarm.com, which is sold through hundreds or thousands of independent dealers, is up to about 1.5 million subscribers right now. Total guess, but maybe Icontrol has around 2.5 million subscribers if you count ADT’s 1.2 million Pulse customers plus whatever all the cable companies have sold. Most of them use Icontrol for interactive services, and Comcast, Time Warner and Rogers have about 4% market share of some 24 million U.S. households with monitored security, according to res ...read more

More than one-half of respondents experiencing wireless network problems would be “very comfortable” using a wired solution to improve the performance of their network. Specifically, 58 percent of all network owners report being “comfortable” (rating 5-7 on a 7-pt. scale) using the existing cable (coax) wiring in their homes to improve their home network’s performance. A similar number report being comfortable using the existing electrical wiring in their homes (56 percent), and ...read more

Just as streaming media is affecting the consumption of music, media such as over-the-top (OTT) video are gaining popularity in American homes, according to statistics announced by Parks Associates.

Parks’ latest data finds 55 percent of U.S. broadband homes subscribe to OTT video services. This percentage is up from 44 percent in 2013, and these numbers are higher with younger heads of households, Parks says.

“Consumers in key demographics have adopted OTT services in l ...read more

Validating the shifting consumption of content, newly released data from Parks Associates estimates that 57 percent of U.S. broadband households subscribe to over-the-top (OTT) video services such as Netflix and/or Hulu Plus.

The Texas-based research firm states that consumers spend $9 per month on Internet video, which is $2 more than what was spent in 2012, and the number of hours consumers spend watching this content is also increasing.

“The number of hours watching v ...read more

CE Pro talked with Jay Kenny, vice president of marketing for Alarm.com, who says security dealers are in a good position to offer homeowners a fully integrated package of smart home services.

Q. Why are smart thermostats gaining momentum, and what is the best way for dealers to present these products to consumers?

A. Smart Thermostats have become one of the most talked about devices in the Internet of Things conversation and Parks Associates forecasts smart thermostat s ...read more

A newly released study conducted by Parks Associates finds that 17 percent of U.S. broadband households are likely to subscribe to HBO’s upcoming over-the-top (OTT) video service.
Parks states that among these likely subscribers, 91 percent are currently pay-TV subscribers, and nearly half would cancel their pay-TV services after subscribing to HBO’s OTT service.

The Texas-based research firm says the average head of household in a U.S. broadband home watches just about 3. ...read more