Shift to Digital TV and Move to Mobile ATSC M&H Services to Bolster PC-TV Tuner Market

(Business News & Technology News, 17 Jul 2008)

The adoption of digital PC-TV Tuners will accelerate in Europe as Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) services continue to expand there. Asia, China and India will present strong growth opportunities, while North America is expected to see a surge during 2009, when analog TV is cut off, and new mobile digital broadcast TV (MDTV) services are introduced by major US TV stations. According to market research firm In-Stat, there will be 30.8 million PC-TV tuners sold annually, with a total retail value of $1.7 billion, by 2012.

However, In-Stat cautions that the uptake of PC-TV tuners is not guaranteed as they face challenges from a wide variety of options. For instance, consumers now have to use computers to gather and view a wide range of video content.

"The challenges to PC-TV tuner adoption include easy-to-use cable, TelcoTV, and satellite TV services that provide high quality Video-on-Demand, Internet distributed video content, IPTV services, and mobile broadband, such as 3G, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX," says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst. "While some European cable and satellite operators allow the use of digital PC-TV tuners with conditional access to receive premium content, the US market will take some time to implement CableLab's tru2way technology. Microsoft also needs to improve their internal support for multiple tuners in a PC."

Click here for more information on In-Stat