Emerging Technologies In The TV Marketplace

The MediaTel INSIGHT TV Technology Seminar, held yesterday in association with MediaGuardian, identified six main areas in terms of new emerging television technologies.

Personal video recorders (PVRs), video on demand (VoD), high definition television (HDTV), interactive TV (iTV), internet protocol TV (IPTV) and mobile TV were all shown to be increasing in importance in the digital arena, with some technologies more established than others.

Globally, PVR penetration is forecast to reach 120 million homes by 2010, with North America leading penetration, at 54 million homes. Europe is predicted to see around 31 million PVR enabled homes by the end of the decade, while the UK is forecast to range between 17-34% by 2010.

VoD was shown to be a relatively small market in the UK , led by the likes of HomeChoice, ntl and Telewest. In the US, however, eMarketer claims that there will be 24 million VoD enabled homes, increasing to 47 million by 2007. Elsewhere, Magna Global is less optimistic, forecasting the figure to be much lower at 33.5 million.

HDTV is predicted to reach 2.6% of all global TV homes by the end of 2005, with the figure likely to rise to almost 10% by 2010, according to Informa Telecomms & Media.

Although the technology is still very much in its infancy in the UK, it has already become a mainstream market in the US and Japan, with the US expected to have 16.5 million HDTV homes by the end of the year and Japan hitting 7.6 million.

However, of the 28.6 million HDTV homes expected worldwide by the end of the year, just 9.8 million will have the necessary set-top box to enable HD programming to be viewed, resulting in only one third of HD-equiped homes actually receiving HD content.

By 2010, programming is forecast to be much more readily available, with more than 75% of HDTV set homes receiving HD content.

iTV, is also expected to enjoy substantial growth over the coming years, with projections seeing the technology reach 69 million subscribers in the US by 2009. In the UK, the iTV market looks set to rise to £2 billion by 2008, up from £577 million in 2004.

Television via broadband, IPTV, is predicted to become an established alternative to digital satellite, terrestrial and cable transmission over the next ten years, with the technology forecast to reach 1.5 million homes by 2010.

The final technology predicted to be an important new medium in the broadcasting world, is that of mobile television, with 124.8 million worldwide broadcast mobile TV users expected by 2010.

Mobile phone operators have already started to offer mobile television services, with Orange already having seven mobile channels accessible via 3G handsets, with a number of new channels being developed.

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