Advanced Video Services: The Next Big Thing?
What role will advanced television and broadband video services play in defining the next generation of entertainment applications? This presentation examines the worldwide pay television market, providing context for the competitive environment in major worldwide geographies and countries. It also focuses on consumer adoption of broadband video services, examining the use cases for “go-to-TV” services and products. This session includes consumer data from Parks Associates’ TV 2.0: The Consumer Perspective study, showing customer affinity and willingness to pay for advanced television features.
 

Digital Home Customer Support: From Troubleshooting to Upselling?
Remote, in-store, and at-home consumer IT support services will generate $1 billion in revenues annually in the next few years, a substantial market opportunity. However, the market for these services to date includes mostly ad hoc and reactive solutions. Are we about to witness the rise of more holistic, marketing-based, and proactive applications? How can customer support move from solving one problem to selling a complete set of lifecycle-based value-adds?
 

The Five Ws of Social Media
Social media evolution has taken the world by storm. Social networks, blogs, user-generated content, and virtual worlds are empowering consumers to share their digital lives with others through different types of media. With this transition, CE device makers must meet evolving consumer needs, but how? Which features must these devices have? What are the business models? Questions abound.

This panel explores the evolving landscape of social media, emerging business models, and the technology with which consumers will want to use these services.
 

This research presentation addresses themes and proposes measures any company can take to help decrease their lost sales in the purchase process. From understanding how to address the importance of brand (or the lack thereof) for a category to surrounding your product with messaging and information based on product life stage, this session aims beyond informational to educational.
 

Connected Consumer Electronics: Linking Premium Applications and Content across Devices
In what ways are connected devices expanding beyond the first stage of home networking? How are CE manufacturers, content providers, and service providers positioned to expand consumer use cases, build value, and create new revenue streams? This panel examines the use cases and requirements for creating a connected CE ecosystem and discusses the role of Internet and television services, technology components, and business models.
 

This research presentation addresses themes and proposes measures any company can take to help decrease their lost sales in the purchase process. From understanding how to address the importance of brand (or the lack thereof) for a category to surrounding your product with messaging and information based on product life stage, this session aims beyond informational to educational.
 

The Future of Digital Photo Frames: A Display or Platform? 
The explosive growth of the digital photo frame market surprised many vendors and retailers. In this nascent market where price competition is cutthroat, brands are striving to differentiate with new product features and use cases to improve customer value perception and build loyalty. Is a photo frame only good for displaying photos? This panel answers this question by looking into future product development trends and the means to expand the digital frame's role in the digital home.
 

Connected Game Consoles: King of the Digital Home
With millions of households connecting their Xbox 360s, PS3s, and Wiis to broadband on one end and HDTVs on the other, game consoles are quickly morphing into a digital entertainment Trojan Horse. Xbox Live Marketplace is already the largest HD video store, and PS3 remains the best selling Blu-ray player. Both companies are also aggressively pursuing new partnerships with TV service providers and content owners. What does this trend mean to broadband and TV service providers, media companies, traditional game publishers, and digital home technology companies?
 

TV 2.0 – The Future of the Set-Top Box
Traditionally, the delivery of all-digital television services has been through the set-top box (STB), and traditionally service providers have handled STB distribution, installation, and maintenance. The advent of technologies such as tru2way and cable card could alter the STB value chain. How will the STB change? How and when will the functionality be integrated into other consumer electronics such as PCs and televisions? What will that mean for other in-home networking devices?