[Satellite News 10-20-11] Several analysis firms issued reports Oct. 19 forecasting a rapid deployment of hybrid set-top-boxes (STBs) by global pay-TV operators worldwide to help them deliver advanced services and manage bandwidth scarcity in broadcast networks.

   ABI Digital Home Analyst Sam Rosen explained that only 40 percent of STBs worldwide featured hybrid capabilities in 2010 and that the software in many of those units had not yet been enabled as operators were not ready to deploy IP video services. “Hybrid box penetration will rise above 60 percent by 2016 as operators look at IP-based video on demand (VOD) and advertising solutions, as well as interactive content. Hybrid set-top boxes have the ability to decode video sent over the Internet or over two types of networks such as satellite and terrestrial,” Rosen told Satellite News.

   Satellite operators have recently expressed an increasing interest in exploring Internet-enabled STBs to deliver advanced, over-the-top (OTT) services in regions with strong broadband penetration. According to Rosen operators in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa are also looking at hybrid satellite. “These regions see DTT platforms as a way to offer national and international feeds integrated with local programming in a bandwidth-efficient way,” he said.

   In an Oct. 19 report, Digital Home Practice Director Jason Blackwell investigated the impact hybrid STBs have on European market, and concluded that the positioning of STB developers such as Pace, Motorola and Huawei show where each region stands in terms of strength. “Huawei has powered to first in IPTV set-top box market share from a distant fourth – a sign that APAC IPTV growth will outpace that of Europe in the coming years. Pace is once again the worldwide leader for set-top box shipments, with Motorola remaining in second place and Technicolor a close third,” said Blackwell.

   An online TV study by German analysis firm Goldmedia showed that the region’s consumers are accessing online content in a diversified way. In its Oct. 19 report, “Web TV Monitor 2011,” Goldmedia asserted that achieving a high share of mobile hits would require operators to optimally adapt content for hybrid devices. “In this respect, online-TV providers are still in the trial phase and, for now, are optimizing their content only for select platforms. Preferences for various platforms aren’t equal. About 90 percent of providers who have adapted their services for mobile devices offer service for Apple’s operating system, while 43 percent offer service for Android’s OS and 38 percent offers Window’s OS,” the report said.

   Goldmedia also believes that hybrid TV via the home TV is gaining significance for European markets, and although access figures via hybrid TV are still barely on the radar, the firm surveyed providers who expected their share of hybrid hits to rise to 6 percent by 2013. “Media centers, video centers, and TV channels’ online-video services in particular stand to profit from growth in hybrid TV. But Germany is still far behind developments in the United States, where Netflix gets about 60 percent of its hits from Playstation and Xbox’s internet-capable game and media consoles alone. One reason for slower development in Germany is the absence of a content aggregator on which all platforms are represented,” Goldmedia wrote in the report.