Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

DirecTV is making an Android-powered streaming box. What gives?

“If (AT&T) had a box that came in at $35 or under, consumers would be interested,” Brett Sappington told me. He’s the senior director of research at Parks Associates, which pays extremely close attention to the over-the-top (OTT) — meaning Internet-based TV — space. “They’d buy it just to see if it worked.”

Sappington reasons that a new streaming box isn’t dead on arrival, so long as it has a stellar user interface, is feature-rich, is open to all TV app developers and is relatively cheap. An existing DirecTV Now customer, for instance, may be compelled to test out the company’s box if it promises better streaming performance — say, no buffering during any live streams — and comes with some sort of service-plus-box deal.

From the article "DirecTV is making an Android-powered streaming box. What gives?" by Jennifer Van Grove.

Previously In The News

HDR standards: Competitive tempo picks up in 2018

For content distributors, the decision-making process goes like this, said Brett Sappington, senior research director at Parks Associates. “Typically, device makers support multiple formats out of...

#TBT: Rated ‘M’ for mobile; Before Alexa, there was Jeeves and SMS search… this week in 2005

DALLAS-The number of households that use Wi-Fi technology for home networking has now surpassed the number that use Ethernet, according to a new Parks Associates survey. According to the “Global Digit...

Want to binge watch? New streaming TV services will make you wait

But to some viewers, going a week after a dramatic cliffhanger “seems like it’s old school,” said Brett Sappington, principal analyst at Parks Associates. “For some consumers, that can be frustrati...

About 20% of U.S. broadband households get live TV through an antenna, Parks Associates says

The percentage of U.S. broadband households that use digital antennas in their homes increased to 20% near the end of 2017, up from 16% in early 2015, according to Parks Associates. "Increasingly,...