"streaming" articles

Yesterday, HBO announced plans to add a stand-alone streaming service to its content offerings. Though the company already has a successful subscription streaming service, HBO Go, this new streaming offering would allow consumers to opt-in without having to purchase an HBO subscription through their pay-TV provider. HBO CEO Richard Plepler noted in his comments yesterday that about 10 million U.S. homes have high-speed broadband and no pay-TV service. Parks Associates research...

Game of Thrones, Girls, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver could be coming to a device near you, whether or not you have a pay-TV subscription. This morning at a Time Warner, Inc. investor meeting, HBO chief executive Richard Plepler announced that the network would launch a standalone over-the-top service as soon as 2015 . The jump would not be drastic from a technology standpoint, as HBO currently delivers content through its HBO GO app. However, a move into the...

Last night, Redbox Instant by Verizon ceased operations ending its 19-month OTT experiment, with both Verizon and Redbox parent company Outwall expressing disappointment with subscription numbers. Redbox Instant failed to find an audience, underscoring the notion that OTT video services must differentiate themselves while offering valuable content to be successful. Verizon went toe-to-toe with established OTT video services Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime, but failed to...

In a recent article for Ars Technica , Parks Associates research revealed that game consoles are the most widely-used connected devices for streaming media in U.S. broadband households. Forty-six percent of U.S. broadband households have a game console connected to the Internet, and of those, over one-quarter (28%) use their console as their primary connected CE device. The firm’s consumer data, released in the report Connected Gaming Consoles last week, also reports that...

Parks Associates : Could you tell me about the changing role and revenue potential of connected CE? Barbara Kraus : Connected CE, until a few years ago, simply meant a hardware device that could connect to the Internet, and manufacturers made their money from unit sales. Now, with connections and the ability to stream video and music to your TV, manufacturers have several opportunities for new revenue streams, such as advertising, content promotion, content placement, and even...

This week, GigaOm , FierceCable , and Streaming Media wrote about data that Google announced at their developers conference that seems to contradict our Chromecast research . However, the articles do a great job of noting several differences in the reported data, namely the different user bases. Google is only showing averages among seven-day active users, while our figures are among all owners . Google’s figures, in other words, do not reflect the overall average among all...

In a recent article for E-commerce Times , Parks Associates director of research Brett Sappington discussed the role of the user interface (UI) in video content. The interface represents the main way a consumer interacts with a video service, so having a good experience with the UI becomes key in winning over customers. The UI also allows consumers to find the content they want to see. Several video services and OTT providers have developed their own methods for helping users...

In a new digital media research report , Parks Associates finds that pay-TV penetration remains fairly steady at around 85% of U.S. broadband households but over-the-top (OTT) video use is increasing on multiple devices, particularly with younger viewers. The report, Trends in Content Licensing , was released following the 2014 NAB Show and the Aereo, Inc. case before the Supreme Court. Forty percent of Millenials consider online video to be their most important source for...