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

Blu-Ray Struggles in the Streaming Age

“Despite consumer shifts to streaming content, Blu-ray players continue to be owned and used by 44% of U.S. broadband households, or roughly 43.5 million households in 2015,” says Barbara Kraus, direc...

Ordinary Home Appliances Are About to Get Really Sexy

But when all is said and done, it’s the less sexy items that most people will interact with on a day-to-day basis. Washing machines, refrigerators and other home appliances aren’t glamorous, but we al...

Why You Shouldn't Buy A New TV For Super Bowl 50

In fact, 4K has been around long enough to have already had a significant impact on the TV landscape. 4K TVs have found their way in to millions of US homes, while recent predictions by industry analy...

Viewed From The Cloud, The Internet Of Things Looks Rosy

Automotive applications have strong momentum: Parks Associates estimates that 25% of U.S. cars and light trucks (about 54 million vehicles) have some kind of network connectivity today, with about 14...