Articles by Kurt Scherf

In the U.S. market, the percentage of broadband households owning and connecting at least one product besides PCs to the Internet has increased 45 percent between 2010 and 2011. Today, approximately 40 percent of all U.S. broadband households own at least one Internet-connected device, with game consoles accounting for 75 percent of these products. The increase in the adoption of these technologies offers manufacturers, pay-TV providers, advertisers and content owners new revenue and growth opportunities.

"The connected home" is a term used frequently but often defined ambiguously. For Parks Associates, the connected home is comprised of the following elements: access services, including broadband, television, landline communications, and mobile services...

Blockbuster and Samsung recently announced that Blockbuster OnDemand will be available on select connected HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and home theater systems starting in the fall of 2009. Samsung will offer connected Blu-ray players and home theater systems with both the Netflix and Blockbuster online services; however, announcements from Blockbuster indicate that Blockbuster OnDemand will have "preferred positioning" on the Blu-ray devices...

Two different types of media uses are propelling the vision for a connected consumer electronics home. These two concepts -- media server and cloud media -- increase the value of television as well as other devices by increasing the ability to discover, aggregate, access and display different types of media. They are two very different scenarios, ...

Broadband penetration has increased -- over the past three years, the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany and France have added roughly 50 million new broadband households -- and brought social media usage up along with it. Currently, almost 40 percent of broadband households in those countries use a social networking site at least monthly Our Global Digital...

Social networking has left an indelible mark on consumers in terms of the way they connect and interact with each other. Sites such as Facebook are adding users at an incredible rate, and the online dating site Match.com reported good growth in the latter stages of 2008. Parks Associates has found the percentage of broadband households using socia...

Ten years ago, the "smart home" was all the rage. Almost every company in our market had a concept center or display house that showed the functionality of the digital home I remember a visit to GTE's (prior to them becoming Verizon) offices in the Dallas area, where they had a multiroom digital home display that showed a variety of advanced commun...

The competitive environment that characterizes today's broadband and value-added services landscape benefits the growth of many digital lifestyle products and services. Consumers are also primary beneficiaries of increased competition among carriers. Case studies reveal that when at least two service providers on relatively equal footing in terms of offerings are actively battling to acquire and retain customers, the end results tend to be 1) lower prices; 2) additional value-added offerings, and 3) improved customer support...

The market to distribute premium video content (mainly TV episodes and feature-length movies) is currently going through one of its most dynamic periods, as experimentation with business models, delivery mechanisms and consumer tastes is in full swing. In the age of online entertainment, consumers get virtually unlimited choice of content and the ...

Consumers have embraced digital media, primarily content such as music, photos and video. They generate their own content, transfer their analog data to digital formats, and download media from the Internet. The percentage of U.S. households with platforms for image and video capture, as well as music playback, has grown significantly in the past ...

The European broadband, communications and television landscape is not just characterized by intense competition among telephone providers. The cable operators, telcos and satellite providers not only need to keep a close eye on each other, but also players delivering digital terrestrial television (DTT) services. As of the end of 2007, Europe had...

Well, Blockbuster has finally done it. After years of simply copying the Netflix business practices (the movie rental via mail model and the Internet video model), it's definitely done something that Netflix is probably never going to do -- offer to buy Circuit City I find Blockbuster's actions to be confusing and inconsistent. In their last quarte...

There is no question that the marriage between consumer electronics devices and broadband content will be a key trend in 2008. For content providers and aggregators, a "go-to-TV" strategy solves at least one of the early challenges facing broadband video services -- the requirement to watch the content on a PC. The hope is that if the industry provides a more seamless video-on-demand experience, consumption of video and other broadband services increases...

Many video providers, particularly in the television and movie spaces, made significant strides to provide their content via a growing number of on-demand channels, including the Internet, in 2005 For video providers, the decision to embrace on-demand distribution was born as a response to both the opportunity and the dilemma posed by broadband Int...

The advent of digital distribution for theatrical, television and user-generated content comes at a time of enormous pressure for the traditional entertainment industry. The industry enjoyed years of strong returns at the box office and from DVD rentals and sales from the late 1990s into the early part of this decade, but U.S. revenue growth has slowed significantly as of late...

The competitive environment that characterizes today's broadband and value-added services landscape should certainly grow a variety of digital lifestyle products and services, including home networking. Consumers are also primary beneficiaries of increased competition among carriers Case studies reveal that when at least two service providers on re...

The use of a home network largely as a broadband-sharing mechanism is just the first of several stages in the evolution of home networking. Both consumers and carriers will use connectivity for applications beyond shared Internet For consumers, the desire to share multimedia content (music, photos, video) among different devices will drive adoption...

I still enjoy flying. This statement may seem anachronistic these days, with all the air travel delays, security screening hassles and wild-eyed rudeness that one does tend to experience from a few fellow travelers However, for me, there's still something fun about going to the airport, traveling to a (sometimes) interesting location, and even the ...

The home networking industry is experiencing rapid maturation, and service providers are likely to take the lead in deploying many of the next-generation connectivity solutions with an emphasis on enhanced multimedia experiences Also, the use of a home network largely as a broadband-sharing mechanism is just the first of several stages in the evolu...

With the December announcement that NDS, a provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, acquired Jungo, a residential gateway software provider, we're continuing to witness consolidation in the market to deliver complete end-to-end access and service provider solutions The purchase also reaffirms the key roles that home connectivity and enh...