In The News

Market research firm Parks Associates says that one-fifth of U.S. homes with broadband access now use an antenna to get live TV. “Digital antennas are experiencing a resurgence as consumers consider over-the-air TV and OTT [over-the-top] video services as alternatives to pay TV,” says Brett Sappington, Parks’ senior director of research.

One drawback to streaming video services is that you can’t always get all your local channels as part of the plan.

An indoor HDTV anten ...read more

According to the research firm, there has also been a decline in multiplatform usage among households, as use rates on individual screens declined despite the fact that overall video viewing has held steady.

“The number of overall consumers viewing video on a connected device remains steady at 92% of U.S. broadband households, but viewers are using fewer devices to access that content,” said Parks Associates senior director Brett Sappington in a statement. “This finding indi ...read more

Parks Associates analyst Brett Sappington agreed that it will be compelling for some customers, particularly due to content that won’t be available elsewhere like MLS games and some of the college sports. But he questioned how valuable the service would be to fans of the MLB and NHL.

“If you’re a sports fan, are you interesting in a generalized sports service with little pieces from everywhere?” said Sappington, guessing that baseball and hockey fans would likely go for MLB. ...read more

Fresh data from Parks Associates suggests U.S. households may have hit a plateau in their online video viewing; the experimentation phase is over and people are settling into more comfortable habits.

While the amount that U.S. broadband households spend on video entertainment outside of their pay TV subscriptions has held at $29 per month for the last two years, that dropped to $23 in the last six months of 2017. This shows less spending on movie theater tickets, DVDs, and B ...read more

Virtual reality needs its own kind of Web browser because the Web currently is designed for 2D, said Hunter Sappington, a researcher with Parks Associates.

"As solutions like Mozilla's become more widely available, they will open up new possibilities for presenting and consuming 3D information on the Web," he told LinuxInsider.

"Firefox Reality is a way for consumers to better browse the Web in VR, but its existence also serves as a sort of toolkit that may encourage Web ...read more

Consumer computer problems, as well as problems with entertainment devices are declining steadily year-over-year, dropping by more than 50% since 2014, according to a new report from Parks Associates. However, smart home devices are creating more problems in households, according to the report. Thirty-four percent of smart home device owners experienced problems with their devices in 2017, up from 28% in 2016.

Twenty to 25 percent of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a s ...read more

Synacor Inc. (NASDAQ: SYNC) today announced Forever Login to curb Pay TV’s password sharing challenges that Parks Associates estimates will be a $10 billion problem. Available on the company’s Cloud ID authentication platform, the new feature lets operators balance easy subscriber access to TV Everywhere content with control over the maximum number of concurrent devices allowed and the length of time before viewers need to login again, if ever. Consumers register trusted devices ...read more

Last August, market analysts at Parks Associates found that more than any other streaming media device -- including those from Amazon, Apple, and Google -- Roku was the leading brand and had increased its market share with 37% of the installed base, up from one-third in the year-ago quarter. Amazon was the only other provider that saw its share rise in the period studied, from 16% to 24%.

From the article "Roku Is Taking the Right Steps" by Rich Duprey.