CED Magazine

The Internet of Things and connected consumer electronics devices are morphing the technical needs of consumers, according to a recent report.

Park Associates' research found that more than 56 percent of smart home device owners were willing to pay extra for monthly tech support services. Parks Associates’ study also found that 16 percent of U.S. broadband households own a smart home device and one-third have experienced at least one technical problem with their devices.

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Parks Associates’ Internet of Things (IoT) research found that young consumers, those with children, and those in a home for three to four years were leading the adoption of Internet-connected energy devices.

The research found that 10 percent of the broadband households across the nation headed by a consumer aged 25-34 owned at least one smart home energy management device, compared to 7 percent of all U.S. broadband households. Further, 9 percent of households with childre ...read more

A study by Parks Associates projected that there will be more than 103 million pay-TV households in the United States by the end of this year.

The report, which was announced at CES this morning, said that two-thirds of the pay-TV households expressed interest in features that they currently don’t have, namely remote access to DVR content.

"Remote access to DVR content was the most popular among pay-TV households without that service. Our research shows 31 percent of pay ...read more

With the launch of UltraViolet CFF for downloads, titles from Twentieth Century Fox and Anchor Bay will feature premium surround sound from Dolby. Digital entertainment services including CinemaNow, Target Ticket, and Vudu will deliver UltraViolet CFF-encoded TV shows and movies in Dolby Digital Plus from these studios.

Dolby cited recent research conducted by Parks Associates that 50 percent of consumers in the United States indicated that sound is very important to them wh ...read more

Home services – packages that include some combination of home automation, home monitoring, and home security – have a long way to go before they rival any of the other elements in the residential bundle in terms of revenue. But the potential is there and initial indications are highly encouraging.

There is still only a small subset of broadband providers that offer some combination of home services. AT&T, Bright House, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner and Verizon in ...read more

Because of this, Netflix viewing may, in fact, be eating into pay-TV profits, Parks Associates concluded in a report based on a consumer survey the research company recently concluded.

"Consumers can pay for a month of Netflix for about the same amount as for two pay-TV VOD movies," said Brett Sappington, director of research at Parks Associates. "Parks Associates research shows consumers know the quality of the OTT service is not comparable to pay-TV quality, but the cost-b ...read more

Now that broadband penetration has flattened out, Parks Associates’ Tom Kerber, director of research for home controls and energy, said telecom providers are looking for ways to bring in additional revenues through services such as home automation, online tech support and digital lockers.

“It is to some extent about maintaining share, and potentially gaining share, but also about that incremental revenue and RPU,” he said. “It’s a little too early to tell [about churn], but I w ...read more

According to Parks Associates, more than 20 percent of households across the nation will have installed IP-based multi-service home networks by 2015.

Homeowners are starting to gravitate toward energy management and bundling opportunities with IP-based security, monitoring and control features.

From a service provider perspective, Verizon, Comcast, Suddenlink and Time Warner Cable have all thrown their respective hats into the home automation ring. Both Comcast and Time ...read more