Viodi View

Kurt Scherf, Vice President and Principal Analyst for Parks Associates, summarizes the panels he hosted on the connected home and 3DTV at CES2010. He talks about the proliferation of connected televisions; he estimates 30 million of the TVs sold this year will be Internet ready. He points out that these connections will go beyond entertainment and include other applications, such as health care and energy management. He also provides his sage thoughts on 3DTV, as well as the gene ...read more

Parks Associates Web Cast, Broadband Video to the TV and Beyond, is an excellent primer for anyone wanting to get the most out of the upcoming Digital Hollywood and TelcoTV conferences. It is not too late to listen, as Parks Associates has the recording online. Kurt Scherf, Vice President, Principal Analyst, combines extensive primary and secondary research together with excellent analysis to provide a clear picture of the current broadband video market.

Scherf's presentation ...read more

The term digital divide is somewhat trite, but the problem still exists. According to Parks Associates, at least 45% of the U.S. residential households will not have broadband in 2007. This hit home a few weeks ago, when I found that a family on my son’s Tee-Ball team does not have broadband or narrowband Internet access. In 2007, it is a bit painful to communicate with someone who is off net. This personal example prompted me to think about Universal Service and its relationship ...read more

One thing I have always enjoyed about the Parks get-togethers is they have really fun people talking about really fun things – home automation, IPTV, digital music. And the audience seems to love it, because it is an audience that loves really neat technical things. But how about the rest of the world; how about the installers calling on every home that wouldn’t have the slightest idea as to why or what home automation? The voting members of the high technology enjoyment society ...read more

Parks Associates’ conferences are always interesting since they bring together a diverse mix of speakers from cutting edge companies together with Parks Associates analysts who do a great deal of primary research on consumer behavior as it relates to consumer electronics. The following bullets represents a sampling of some of the many insightful comments at this two day conference.

From the article "A Different View Inside the Home," by Tac Berry.

At last week's Parks and Associates’ Experts Analyze the Digital Living Landscape conference, Parks and Associates’ analysts, Kurt Scherf, Harry Wang and Michael Cai, used results from their primary research to illuminate what consumers want from service providers. Scherf has the common sense that one would expect from someone with roots from Iowa and, as such, his presentations and those of his colleagues are not laced with hyperbole, but are tempered with the reality of the cha ...read more

The Parks Associates Digital Rights Management provided a global view of DRM and the need for conditional protection. This webinar was a good primer on the reasons why DRM has become a must-have for anyone considering electronic distribution of content. Kurt Scherf, Vice President of Research for Parks Associates, led this webinar and discussed various research with regards to consumer reactions to DRM.

From the article "Parks Associates View of Digital Rights Management" by K ...read more

One potential solution to the USF conundrum would be to drop the distinction between Information and Telecommunications services and levy a fee on all services that provide voice communications. This sounds great, but is it possible? At the various conferences I have recently attended, experts have questioned whether the U.S. can regulate telephone services originating from outside its borders and whether it is even possible to identify voice traffic, given that these services ma ...read more