Live over-the-top viewing hours will surpass those of traditional broadcast TV within five years, but bandwidth limitations are challenging quality of service and quality of experience, said a Thursday report by Level 3, Streaming Media and Unisphere Research. Half of survey respondents -- 500 media industry professionals -- expect year-on-year OTT revenue growth of 30-50 percent in 2017. Higher frame rates (HFR) and high dynamic range are in the spotlight for the industry this year, with almost half of respondents offering or planning to offer both options, while 20 percent are focused only on HFR delivery, such as 1080p for sports content, said the report.

Following annual growth of 6 million units per year, six in 10 U.S. internet homes have an installed connected TV device, said an NPD report Wednesday. In January, streaming media players were the most common installed internet-connected TV device, with 35 percent of U.S. internet homes owning a streaming media player, up from 29 percent last year, NPD said. U.S. households average three installed devices capable of delivering apps to their TVs, said analyst John Buffone, but the mix of devices continues to change as TV makers migrate to operating systems such as those from Roku, Amazon and Google. Content owners are benefiting from the trend by reaching “a larger audience through distribution on fewer platforms” and viewers benefit from finding more programming they want “in a single location,” said Buffone (see separate report this issue on LG’s smart TV adoption of the Sling TV service). All of the top subscription video services had increased usage on connected TVs and attached devices, with Amazon Prime Video pulling the highest usage numbers among all demographics and on all connected TV platforms from January 2016 to January 2017, said NPD. Hulu’s usage on a connected TV device had the steepest growth for the period, it said. Amazon and Netflix will continue to invest in content because original and exclusive programming are likely key drivers to the success of viewing apps, said Buffone. NPD’s survey, taken Jan. 26-Feb. 9, reached 5,350 U.S. consumers, aged 18 and older, reporting on more than 12,000 TVs.

Young TV viewers don't watch much live TV anymore and hardly use DVRs at all, said nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon in a blog post Sunday. Pointing to Nielsen data, nScreenMedia said live TV viewing "seems to be holding up well against mobile and broadband video competition," but that picture changes when looking at younger viewers, with those age 12 to 24 watching a third less TV in Q4 2016 than they did in Q4 2013. It also said some of the decline in live TV watching is due to increased time-shifted viewing, but DVR use is growing only for those 35 and older, and time-shifted content viewing is declining for age groups younger than that. "Is it any wonder that youth oriented live television is struggling," nScreenMedia said.

Worldwide shipments of PCs inched up 0.6 percent in Q1, growing for the first time since Q1 2012, said an IDC report. Shipments of desktops, laptops and workstations, totaling 60.3 million units, were projected to decline 1.8 percent for the period, IDC said. The U.S. had a slight decline, while other mature markets outdid emerging countries, it said. Global growth drivers included tight supplies of NAND and DRAM, which led vendors to boost shipments to lock in supply ahead of future cost increases, said IDC. The PC market also “continued along a path of stabilization” that began in second half 2016, it said. Competition from tablets and smartphones, along with lengthening product life cycles, caused a 30 percent falloff in PC sales from their peak in 2011, said analyst Jay Chou. The commercial market is beginning a replacement cycle that should drive growth, but consumer demand will “remain under pressure,” Chou said Tuesday. Growth in gaming PCs and tablet saturation should help move the consumer market “toward stabilization,” he said. In the U.S., notebook PC sales dropped in Q1 after a strong holiday season, said the research firm, and commercial PC growth was driven primarily by Chromebook sales. Globally, HP regained its market lead in Q1 at 21.8 percent, after losing the number one spot in Q2 2013 to Lenovo, IDC said. It credited HP’s “deep portfolio” and strong notebook sales across all regions, with 13.1 million shipments, up 13 percent over the year-ago quarter. Lenovo held second place with 20.4 percent market share, on shipments up 1.7 percent to 12.3 million units. Dell shipments were up 6 percent to 9.5 million units, giving it 16 percent share, followed by Apple at 7 percent share and Acer with 6.8 percent share, it said. Dell’s growth in the U.S. slowed relative to other markets, it said.

No one can deny TV is changing and that services like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon are driving “much of this change,” Digital UK CEO Jonathan Thompson said in prepared remarks for delivery Wednesday before a Broadcasting Press Guild media briefing in London. “But new technology alone cannot dictate the future of television,” said Thompson, whose company runs the Freeview over-the-air TV platform that reaches 19 million U.K. homes. “If it did, we’d all be watching 3D TV.” The industry needs to be “a bit more skeptical about some of the big claims we hear about OTT leading to the death of broadcast television,” he said of over-the-top services. “We should be less willing as an industry to adopt the Silicon Valley view of the world based on flimsy evidence and half-truths. We should be wary of big claims when coupled with a lack of transparency over audience figures and instead focus on real world evidence of what viewers are actually doing. Even the much talked about millennials who have fully embraced the on-demand world are still watching more live TV than anything else. All the evidence points to a blend of viewing behaviours and technologies for the foreseeable future and we should be planning content strategies and networks which will meet that need.”

Logging into hot spots and updating firmware were the “biggest customer support needs” of consumers 34 and younger who bought the Samsung Galaxy S7, but simply learning how to make calls or setting up voice mail were the worries of those 65 and older. So said the data analytics firm DeviceBits, which argued that Galaxy S7 demographic trends can be used to predict the “customer service issues we can expect on Galaxy S8." DeviceBits looked at “which customer service self-support materials specific demographics searched for” during the Galaxy S7 launch, it said in a Thursday report. “Based on this insight driven by the powers of machine learning, companies like Samsung can now use data to plan their launches to run a little more smoother, knowing which demos are going to have certain types of customer support issues.” Customer support is often thought of as an after-the-sale function, said the firm. "However, when data is analyzed and used as a predictive measure, brands can be better prepared to handle customer support requests on the front end. With today's self-support online materials, brands can leverage machine learning and algorithms as a way to provide a better customer experience and support future sales in many cases."

With 13 percent of U.S. households having broadband but no traditional multichannel video package, the materiality of cord cutting is undeniable, Kagan said in a news release Wednesday. The researcher now part of S&P Global said the number of broadband homes without traditional multichannel service grew by more than 2 million last year, to roughly 15.4 million. It also said FCC efforts to close the digital divide will mean more availability of high-speed data service, which in turn will likely "perturb established video-delivery dynamics in areas currently not served," driving yet more broadband-only trends. The number of non-multichannel broadband homes should reach 28 million by 2021, Kagan said, magnifying the upward broadband-only home trend.

Consumer intentions to buy TV sets increased in March compared with February, according to preliminary data in the Conference Board’s monthly survey. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 consumers for the board through March 16, and found 13.7 percent said they plan to buy a TV set in the next six months, up from 12.4 percent in February and 12 percent in January, but down sharply from 16.1 percent in March 2016, the board reported Tuesday. Its Consumer Confidence Index increased sharply in March to its highest level since December 2000, it said: “Consumers feel current economic conditions have improved over the recent period, and their renewed optimism suggests the possibility of some upside to the prospects for economic growth in the coming months.”

Consumer optimism toward tech spending and the overall economy took hits in March but remained above their March 2016 levels, CTA said in a Tuesday report. “Despite an aggregate decline around sentiment to buy tech, respondents are showing a higher inclination to spend more on tech in the coming months than they reported last March,” said Chief Economist Shawn DuBravac in a statement. That the stock market “lost some momentum” in recent weeks appears to be the factor that's lowering consumer optimism toward the overall economy, DuBravac said: “While respondents aren’t indicating they expect the economy to be worse off in the near future, a weak equities market coupled with other indicators are likely holding back overt optimism.”

Consumers are in the “drivers’ seat” today, said 30-plus-year NPD veteran and newly tapped CEO Karyn Schoenbart in an email Thursday. Schoenbart, most recently chief operating officer, was named CEO Wednesday (see the personals section of the March 23 issue of this publication), succeeding Tod Johnson, who became executive chairman. With consumer priorities and shopping behavior evolving, NPD will continue to meet market needs, Schoenbart said. She cited the developing consumer preference for “experiences over things,” that’s leading to a proliferation of shopping alternatives. “The good news is that there is also a wealth of data available to help marketers understand and anticipate trends,” she said. On how NPD will adjust its tracking methodology to keep up with changing consumer buying habits, Schoenbart pointed to the NPD’s "Checkout Tracking" service that monitors the same consumers over time based on information from “millions of receipts” from both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce. Checkout Tracking shows how shopping habits are changing over time and also allows NPD clients to “dig into how habits differ by demographic,” she said. That’s allowing NPD to understand the differences in shopping behavior between millennials and baby boomers, for instance. “It’s also key to understanding the shopping cadence, particularly during key times of year, like holiday,” she said. The tracking service complements NPD’s core data, she said. On possible acquisitions ahead in an industry that’s seen several mergers and acquisitions in recent years, Schoenbart said NPD is generally focused on organic growth but will look to acquisitions “when there is an opportunity to fill in gaps and strengthen our existing portfolio.” She gave as an example NPD’s recent purchase of Nielsen’s U.S. book business and videogames research provider Eedar to “broaden and deepen our expertise.” NPD provides sales tracking and analytics for more than 20 industries in addition to consumer electronics.