PC World

As the latest edition of the International CES trade show begins on Tuesday, consumers are faced with a slew of new standards, protocols and frameworks to tie home IoT products together as an easily managed system. On Monday, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced it's finished a new specification it calls Wi-Fi HaLow, which uses less power so it can work in small battery-powered devices.

Consumers could benefit from steps to combine some of these approaches. Research company Parks As ...read more

Connected homes may make life easier eventually. A thermostat linked to a garage-door opener could tell who's coming home and set the heat or air-conditioning for their preferences. Compatible room lights and an audio system could join in, too.

That vision's starting to catch on. Ownership of connected home devices in the U.S. grew by 50 percent this year, and fully 43 percent of all households in the country will buy one in the next year, research company Parks Associates s ...read more

According to Parks Associates, 68 percent of all American households watch streaming video on PCs, with about 53 percent of all streaming video consumed on computers. But many, many more have given up the PC to watch movies on connected TVs: 89 percent, Parks says.

In a sense, PlayReady is Microsoft’s attempt to convince Hollywood of the viability of the PC as a media streamer. “Microsoft appears to be future-proofing, evidenced by their proposed support for 8K video,” Glenn ...read more

Still, the failure of the Nexus Q contained the kernel of a clever idea: What if you stripped away the interface of a streaming TV device, and instead relied on the phones and tablets we already use so often? Not only would this be simpler than a clunky, button-laden remote, it would also require less processing power on the device itself. The resulting product could be smaller, cheaper and in many ways easier to use than any other device on the market.

That product was Goog ...read more

A slightly-smaller percentage of American families plan to buy a tablet during the holiday sales season than last year, a market research company reported today.

According to Dallas-based Parks Associates, 29 percent of 2500 U.S. households surveyed said that a tablet was on their to-get gift lists, down from 32 percent in the same period of 2012.

But tablets remain the hot-ticket item in consumer electronics, said John Barrett, director consumer analytics at Parks—and A ...read more

Offerings like Aereo reflect changing consumer viewing habits. A survey by Parks Associates this year, for example, showed that one-third of broadband-equipped American households regularly stream entertainment from Internet-based services like Amazon Instant Video and Netflix.

From the article, "Live-Streaming Service Aereo Wins Round Against TV Broadcasters" by John P. Mello Jr.

Most Siri users consider themselves either “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with Apple’s voice-enabled personal assistant, according to a survey from Parks Associates.

An impressive 50 percent of respondents said they were very satisfied with Siri. Another 21 percent said they were satisfied with the iPhone 4S feature. But as enthusiastic as Siri users were about the technology, they appear less keen about it in other applications, most notably in a television set. Only 37 pe ...read more

First iPods, now tablets. The numbers of consumers using their tablets to listen to music--more than 60 percent, according to Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates--is reportedly going to trigger a widespread increase in the embedded network technologies in home audio products.

Parks Associates' latest report, Networked Audio Products: Market Update, released Tuesday, predicts that audio product manufacturers will add networking capabilities in order to connect their p ...read more