Blog articles from 04/2009

Parks Associates workshop offers strategies to monetize video services, digital devices, energy management, advertising -- With U.S. households reluctant to cancel home services despite the down economy, growth in cable and IPTV VoD services will remain strong, with revenues exceeding $11 billion by 2013, according to Parks Associates. The international research firm is hosting the pre-show workshop Monetizing Connectivity in the Home on June 2, 2009, at CONNECTIONS™ , to analyze...

Primetime anytime services will help providers gain and retain subscribers -- Broadband households in Europe and the U.S. consistently rank primetime anytime VoD services as the most valuable service out of all TV 2.0 offerings, according to Parks Associates’ new report Television Services: The Global Outlook. The international research firm says that primetime anytime services, which allow viewers to watch a show on-demand on their TV regardless of its original air date, will...

Parks Associates is supporting the Broadband Properties Summit 2009 on April 27-29 at the Hyatt Regency - DFW, Dallas, Texas. Harry Wang , Director, Health & Mobile Product Research, Parks Associates, is speaking on the panel session Competitive Differentiation and Revenue Generation with Healthcare Services over Fiber, Monday, April 27 from 3:10 PM - 4:00 PM. Bill Ablondi , Director, Home Systems Research, Parks Associates, is speaking on the opening session Adding Value to...

First, there was the Embarq eGo™ . Then, the AT&T HomeManager™. Then, Verizon's One . Now, Comcast looks to be rolling out an Internet-enhanced phone system . As I posted back in September, this makes for some interesting times with the service providers and the new customer premise equipment they're launching.

During difficult times, the true optimists find the silver lining and recall that great opportunities are borne out of change. There are great opportunities in technologies for residential energy management now rising from the ashes of the global economic meltdown. Parks Associates has been tracking home automation including energy management solutions since the late 80’s. Many solutions have come and gone, lacking sufficient support for mass adoption. If your average monthly energy...

GE Healthcare struck another R&D alliance in the home patient monitoring sector in less than a year after the Quietcare deal. This time, its partner is Intel. Like the Quietcare deal, the partnership also allows GE to co-market Intel’s Health Guide, a home health monitoring gateway product. The two companies will also contribute a combined $250 million over five years on R&D in this field. Intel is fortunate to land GE as a partner and distributor as the latter’s health...

Last week, Walgreens kicked off a campaign to begin offer free basic medical care through its walk-in clinics in retail stores. Recipients of the free care must be people that recently lost their jobs and their immediate family members. There are other strings and restrictions. For instance, annual exams and vaccinations are excluded. Walgreens’ Take Care Clinics are not as widely available as its drug stores. The retail clinic chain now has about 340 stores in 30 metro locations, or...

My wife and I were both traveling over the past week - me internationally, her domestically. We both missed Chuck on Monday night, March 30. We've both become pretty addicted to this show. Upon our return, we started playing the episode from the DVR. However, due to some unknown glitch, the program only recorded for 15 minutes. So, I booted up my laptop and we watched the episode from Hulu. Only after the program finished online did I discover that Chuck has been added to the...