What "Cloud Computing" Could Mean to Consumers

"Cloud" is such a buzz phrase today that it's easy to be overwhelmed by what's really happening on the consumer side. Parks Associates specifies the following requirements for a product or solution to fit in the "personal cloud" category:

• For hardware, appliance, and online solutions, the ability to upload all desired content to remote storage, not just a single-purpose site

• The ability to "push" - or share - only specific folders or files with friends or family

• Remote and ubiquitous access to content from multiple IP-connected devices

• For premium content service cloud offerings, the ability to offer multiple formats or work with hardware with the necessary transcoding capabilities to play content on a wide number of devices

To further complicate this market, there are several different types of consumer cloud solutions...

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State of the Worldwide Digital Television Market

The global market for television services continues to grow despite persistent economic challenges throughout the world. Most of this growth is occurring in digital technologies, with digital terrestrial and cable services supplanting their analog counterparts while IPTV providers fight to increase their piece of the television services pie.

Increased awareness of what is possible on the TV has driven consumer interest in these services, and competition has caused many providers around the globe to evaluate and introduce advanced TV features that leverage digital technologies. Companies in developed nations, including North America and Europe, are rolling out on-demand, interactive, and time/place-shifting offerings. Several providers in emerging markets, such as China and India, are working on digitalization of their services, and they are exploring the new features made possible by this technological shift.

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Is Google TV for real?

There is value in Google's solution (the ability to initiate searches across all kinds of content, including a pay-TV provider's channel lineup), but there are drawbacks. First, will users want to use a keyboard in their TV search experience? (Logitech says that the Harmony software can be downloaded as an app to Android smartphones, so that would be another option.)

Second, without the blessing of the pay-TV providers (DISH Network is the only service provider to work with Google TV), Google's search capabilities would be limited to the provider's program guide information and NOT assets like VoD titles. As the VoD libraries of the service providers grow, search and discovery is going to be more and more important - Joe Ambeault commented that Verizon constantly changes the title art and positioning of its VoD assets to encourage purchases.

Google touts its TV solution as an open platform, but one has to wonder if the pay-TV providers will care. Verizon's approach has been to develop advanced TV features themselves. Let's assume that we start to see more provider-device relationships emerge such as the LG Electronics/Orange deal or Philips Net TVs and TeliaSonera VoD. In this case, could Google TV be useful? Sure, but the question is who controls the user interface and search functionality. I would think the operator would still want that control.

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The Role of the Set-Top Box

The set-top box (STB) is the primary point of entry into the digital home for television services, including cable TV, DTH, and IPTV. This device has evolved beyond its historical role as a simple black box sitting on top of a large TV set into a smaller form-factor device supporting a variety of functions, notably interactive television applications. Service providers worldwide are aggressively upgrading their equipment to support the migration away from analog television and toward digital television (DTV), with the hopes of improving consumer satisfaction and creating service differentiators.

In markets with a high penetration of DTV subscriptions, support for advanced features such as VoD, DVR/PVR, and other interactive applications are driving the deployment of digital STBs. Another interesting development has been a resurgence in the concept of a residential gateway (RG), which is a complex device capable of delivering multiple services to the home, including video, data, voice, and wireless. This development seems to set up competing hardware paradigms, with two different form factors expanding their roles, with functional overlap, within the home. Right now, there is no clear industry consensus about whether, and to what extent, STB functions will shift to the residential gateway or vice versa.

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Business Models for On-Demand Lifestyles

In the traditional value chain for media, consumers have paid monthly or a la carte to aggregators or distributors. The advent of digital media gave rise to a new relationship, where the consumer and the content owner were connected directly, often bypassing those traditional content gatekeepers.

But even the content owners can lose out on this arrangement since it is still an open question on how to monetize over-the-top (OTT) media. In Europe in particular, consumers are downloading video in large numbers but primarily because the content is free. When they have to pay, they go to more traditional video venues, such as the cinema.

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