Blog articles from 06/2022

Parks Associates’ Future of Video: OTT, Pay TV, and Digital Media is excited to announce Firstlight Media as a sponsor of the upcoming event.  Firstlight Media is leading cloud transformations of OTT and in-home experiences for pay TV, telcos, and MVPDs. Its cloud-native platform outperforms legacy online video platforms in critical areas, including delivering premium video, handling complex use cases, and scaling to millions of viewers. Firstlight Media enables immersive...

Google’s annual I/O event, which took place from May 11-12, revealed a handful of new releases and updates to its range of hardware and software. Google also shared that a few previously discontinued and canceled products would be revived, including Android tablets and watches, the latter of which will feature a partnership with Samsung. Android 13 was also debuted and is slated for release in August alongside the new Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. Key points of emphasis for Android 13 include...

Pay-TV subscriptions and revenues are on a continuous decline as consumers embrace OTT services. The research firm forecasts that traditional pay TV will decline to 76.7 million households by 2024, the lowest penetration in a decade and a 27% drop from 2014. Parks Associates estimates that approximately 35 to 40 new streaming services entered the market between March 2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and the end of 2021. More than half of US...

Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) took place on June 6, with the tech giant unveiling a score of new product releases and software updates. Apple’s latest announcements were focused on enhancements and upgrades to its existing products and services.  Notable was the emphasis on the Home App upgrades, along with security and efficiency. Parks Associates research shows that while consumers use multiple platforms in the home, 66% are interested in a single...

Accessing and experiencing digital media have become more complicated, both for consumers and the companies providing the content. The fracturing of entertainment options, coupled with a decline in traditional pay TV, has forced many consumers to subscribe to a bevy of services in order to access the video content they want to watch. While this situation offers consumers a greater than ever selection of content, it offers a unique set of challenges from an authentication and...

After more than twenty years of pushing computing from local servers into the cloud, many industries now strategize more carefully about the most appropriate options among cloud computing, edge computing, and hybrid edge-cloud configurations. Cost, latency, privacy, and reliance on connectivity are all factors informing these decisions. Hybrid edge-cloud architectures enable the best of both worlds for many applications, such as connected devices. They can optimize data processing,...

The 800-pound gorilla issue in the security device space is the prospect of colliding market segments. Market segments in the residential security industry continue to experience a blurring of lines between professional and DIY solutions. Professional installation and monitoring providers, such as ADT, Brinks, and Comcast, have added self-installation and monitoring options. At the same time, companies that started in the DIY space now offer professional installation and...

It stands to reason that video and audio analytics tech on other devices will eventually come to the smart home as engineering advancements make it feasible on a smaller and cheaper platform. Consumers may encounter this technology at work or in public and come to expect similar features and capabilities. There are also advancements in audio and video data that will act as competition or supplement these audio and video in gathering data for analysis. Rise of Alternatives:...