Online video revenues to triple

Consumption of legitimate free and paid for online video is on track to exceed 770 billion views across the USA, UK, France and Germany this year, according to a new report from Futuresource Consulting. Improvements in accessibility and ease of use are among the growth triggers that have seen the rise from around 640 billion views last year, with the USA dominating the market.

“Total online video views are on track to grow by 20 per cent and paid-for online video revenues will reach in excess of $3 billion this year,” advised Mai Hoang, Senior Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “Online purchase and rental transactions are playing a part, but the majority of this revenue is coming out of the USA, predominantly through streaming subscription service Netflix. By 2015, paid-for online video spend is forecast to hit close to $7 billion across the four countries.”

Source: Advanced Television.

A fifth of TV sets will be internet-connected by 2016

The number of TV sets connected to the Internet will reach 551 million by 2016 for the 40 countries covered in a new report from Digital TV Research.

The Connected TV Forecasts report states that this translates to 20% of global TV sets by 2016, up from 6% at end-2010. South Korea leads take up with a forecasted 15.0% penetration in 2016.

Source: Digital TV Group.

Skype-enabled HDTVs and webcams

Skype announced partnerships with LG and Panasonic to offer Skype-enabled HDTVs, which are expected to be available in mid-2010. Both LG and Panasonic will offer specially-designed HD webcams that are optimized for Skype video calls as separate accessories that can be plugged into the televisions. These webcams support 720p HD at 1 Mb/s symmetrical bandwidth and include special microphones and optics that can pick up sound and video from a couch-distance.

Skype also announced support for video calls on PCs in 720p HD resolution at 30fps, using new Skype Certified HD webcams that can handle the video encoding and processing onboard, removing the need for a high-performance computer to encode the HD video.

Source: I4U News here and here.

DVB Internet TV questionnaire

The DVB Project recently initiated a study mission on Internet TV Content Delivery to investigate technology options to deliver DVB-type content over the Internet to a large number of CE devices (including game consoles), PCs or mobile devices. The study mission focuses on content delivery, but other functions such as codecs, security, or metadata are also considered.

To address these objectives, the study mission starts with a questionnaire to collect information on existing technologies in the respective area. DVB members and non-DVB members alike are encouraged to respond to the questionnaire.

You can find the questionnaire at this link.

IPTV subscription soars

IPTV subscriptions in Western Europe soared last year despite the economic downturn, with 45% growth between December 2007 and December 2008.

Of all the European markets, France had the widest adoption of IPTV with growth of 23% year on year to 5.7 million, more than half of all subscribers in Western Europe (10.3 millions total).

There have been a couple of IPTV service closures. Volny IPTV in the Czech Republic and Tiscali IPTV in Italy have both closed TV operations recently. Both failed to grow in the face of strong competition in their respective markets. But these examples are very much exceptions to an overall picture of steady growth in most markets.

The figures come from a report written by analysts Point Topic for the Broadband TV forum.