Insight TV, which produces 4K UHD HDR content, said it signed an agreement with the National Cable Television Cooperative to offer its 4K/UHD network to NCTC member providers. MTC, which serves the Central Catskill region of New York, is the first to launch Insight TV under the pact, according to Mark Romano, VP, Americas, Insight TV.

NCTC represents more than 750 small and mid-sized independent cable and broadband operators. MTC added Insight TV to its 4K tier of channels.

“Working with NCTC, we are offering member companies some compelling incentives to launch Insight TV and are delighted that to have MTC on board as the first NCTC member to add our channel,” Romano said in a release. “It’s a great opportunity for systems to get on board with a network that is defining a new standard in quality linear and digital video experiences for consumers. In today’s crowded market, Insight TV provides a competitive advantage for operators looking to differentiate themselves by providing their customers with content and a viewing experience they can’t get elsewhere."

“At MTC, we are always looking to offer our subscribers the highest quality content and that includes programming in 4K,” MTC general manager Glen Faulkner said in the release. “Insight TV’s original, native 4K UHD content is as beautiful as it is fascinating entertainment. We’re delighted to be able to offer this new service to our viewers.”

Sample programming via Insight TV includes Travel With a Goat, Road to Gymkhana GRiD, King of the Hammers, THRU and Breaking Limits. Insight TV is based in the Netherlands.

Sales of 4K Ultra High Definition TV sets will climb 21% during the coming year, and revenue for subscription video streaming services will jump by 24% during the same period, according to the Consumer Technology Association's mid-year update of its "U.S. Consumer Technology Sales and Forecast," published Tuesday (July 31).

The semi-annual industry-wide update puts overall consumer technology sales up 6% by the end of this year compared with 2017, significantly higher than the annual growth rate of 3.9% predicted in CTA's January forecast.

CTA's January 2018 Report: Consumer Spending on Streaming Services to Reach $19.5B

The expected home technology growth is being spurred by a strong economy, low unemployment and the tax cut, according to CTA's analysis.

CTA foresees expansion in smart home and whole-home WiFi systems, which, along with streaming video, potentially affect cable operators and programmers' activities in those sectors. The rapid acquisition of 4K TV sets will offset the continuing flat sales for traditional HDTV receivers, possibly spurring networks to accelerate UHD delivery. CTA predicted that nearly 22.5 million 4K UHD sets will be sold in 2019, compared with 18.5 million this year and 16.7 million in 2017. 

The sales pace of smart TVs will slow down: 33.8 million units last year, 35.2 million this year, 36.6 million in 2019, according to the CTA analysis. But that widespread penetration of Internet-accessible TV sets will be accompanied by continuing growth in sales of streaming media players (including sticks and set-top boxes): 17 million units last year, 18.6 million units this year and 19.7 million units next year, according to the CTA forecast.

Related Study: 74% of U.S. TV Homes Have at Least One Connected TV Device

CTA foresees consumer expenditures on streaming video services to reach $13.4 billion this year, and $16.6 billion in 2019, compared with about $4 billion in 2014.

"These services are expected to sustain healthy, double-digit growth rates for the foreseeable future as consumers explore the various content delivery platforms available to them," the report concluded. "Live TV streaming options are becoming more widely available this year, potentially attracting traditional pay-TV subscribers that have until now avoided cutting the cord for fear of losing their sports programming. With plentiful streaming options available, it is expected that viewers will continue to cut the cord to explore their ideal blend of streamed content."

Related: 'Consumer Reports' Guides Subscribers on Cord-Shaving

At the same time, home networking devices -- especially smart speakers as forerunners of the Internet of Things juggernaut -- will fly off retail (and online) shelves. And their presence will raise new competitive issues, especially as fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology is deployed.

“The new Internet of Things is the ‘Intelligence of Things’,” said Steve Koenig, CTA vice president of market research.“Connected products tap artificial intelligence to enhance services, especially in categories including smartphones, connected cars and smart home devices. And with 5G on our doorstep – the first 5G products will hit the market this year – we’re crossing into a new phase of faster and smarter connected devices.”

Rick Kowalski, CTA senior manager of market research and business intelligence, focused on the "huge shift in how people consume content." He emphasized the value of live streaming, which has "more consumers exploring their over-the-top video options." "This remarkable growth in streaming services shows us that the phrase ‘content is king’ is more relevant than ever,” Kowalski said.

CTA said it expects U.S. consumer technology revenue overall will reach $377 billion in 2018. CTA said that this year will mark the first time that whole-home WiFi products and artificial/virtual reality headsets hit the $1 billion wholesale revenue milestone.

Among the other hot categories, with expected wholesale revenue levels, are voice-controlled smart speakers ($3.2 billion) and smarthome devices such as thermostats, detectors, locks and doorbells ($4.6 billion). CTA acknowledges that "multi-year projections cannot account for unpredictable factors such as changes in tariffs, trade laws, interest rates and federal policy."

The CTA report is available for $2,000 to non-members of association.

Follows CTA/NCTA Agreement Extension

CTA's forecast came just days after the organization and NCTA – The Internet & Television Association announced a four-year extension of the "Voluntary Agreement for Ongoing Improvement to the Energy Efficiency of Small Network Equipment." They said the cross-industry initiative has improved the efficiency of home internet devices such as modems and routers by 20%.

Although the agreement is unrelated to CTA's sales forecasts, it exemplifies the co-dependency of the industries.

The Small Network Equipment (SNE) Voluntary Agreement was initially adopted in 2015 to build upon the success of a similar award-winning voluntary agreement for set-top boxes endorsed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2013. The extension of the voluntary agreement raises the bar for signatories by committing to meet new, more rigorous energy efficiency levels by 2020 that are on average 11% lower than the agreement’s current levels.

"The four-year extension of the voluntary agreement demonstrates our industry's commitment to approaches that assure our customers benefit from energy efficiency measures while maintaining our ability to develop new services and equipment which they demand,” said Neal Goldberg, NCTA’s general counsel.

Agreement signatories include the major broadband internet services providers serving 95 million U.S. households (89%of the market) -- AT&T, Cablevision, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Cox Communications, Frontier and Verizon -- as well as leading device manufacturers Actiontec, ARRIS, D-Link, NETGEAR, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive.

The Economist: Netflix to Spend $12B-$13B on Content in 2018

TWIN:The Economist has predicted that Netflix will spend between $12 billion and $13 billion on content this year, up from the $9 billion it shelled out in 2017.

MCN Take: That’s more than any other studio spends on movies, or any TV network spends on non-sports programming, The Economist said. And for that price tag, Netflix customers will get 82 feature films and 700 new or exclusively licensed television shows.

Read the full story at The Economist.

Netflix Tests ‘Ultra’ Service Plans in Europe

TWIN: According to several reports, Netflix is testing a higher-priced “Ultra” service plan in Europe that will offer 4K Ultra HD video quality and let subscribers stream the service on four devices simultaneously – up from the three currently allowed for 17 euros ($20) per month.

MCN Take: In the U.S., Netflix already offers 4K and four screens via its $13.99 per month Premium plan. But some reports said if the European plan catches on, it could lead to higher prices in the U.S. Still, most analysts believe Netflix has some pricing leeway in the U.S., as domestic subscribers shrugged off an October 2017 increase. Netflix had its single highest quarterly subscriber growth in that year’s Q4.

See the full story at USA Today.

Netflix Most Popular Platform to Watch Content

TWIN: Netflix beat out cable, broadcast, and everybody else in terms of the most popular platform by which to view content, according to a Cowen & Co. survey.

[embed]https://twitter.com/CowenResearch/status/1014091127513866240[/embed]

MCN Take: Netflix placed first as the go-to for overall viewing – 27.2% of all respondents said they went to Netflix most often to view content (basic cable was second with 20.4%). The gap was even wider with younger viewers. Nearly 40% of those respondents in the coveted 18-34 year old demographic said they look to Netflix most often (You Tube was second with 17%).

Read the full story at Syfy.com.

Netflix to Drop User Reviews Next Month

TWIN: Amateur critics will have one less online vehicle next month, after Netflix drops written user reviews of its content. The company said the reason for the action is primarily due to lack of participation.

MCN Take: The action comes after Netflix dropped the five-star rating system from its apps last year. Netflix plans to stop accepting reviews on July 30, but they will be readable until mid-August.

Read the full story at CNET.

Netflix Nabs Mixtape, Musical Series Originally Eyed for Fox

TWIN: Netflix continued to gather up cast-off broadcast series last week, saving Mixtape, a romantic musical series originally earmarked for Fox.

MCN Take: This isn’t the first time Netflix has rescued a series from the broadcast chopping block – it took over production for Fox’s Lucifer after it was canceled in May. Netflix has ordered 10 episodes of Mixtape, keeping creator Joshua Safran (Gossip Girl and Quantico) and most of the original cast – only the main actor has been recast.

Read the full story at Variety.

The first quarter of 2016 presented mix results for TV makers as global shipments drooped, but 4K TV shipments surged

Worldwide TV shipments in the period fell 2%, to 49.1 million units while the global 4K TV market surged 99% year-over-year, according to IHS’s TV Sets Market Tracker.

Noting that categories such as 4K are critical to the stability of revenue and profits for global TV brands, 4K TVs shipments reached 9.3 million units, or 19% of all units shipped.

Additionally, the average TV screen size globally increased to a new high of 40.6-inches.

Demand for big screen TVs (55-inches and larger) were particularly strong in China – up nearly 80% in Q1 -- thanks to declining prices that fueled consumer upgrade activity, IHS said.

Large-screen TV shipments in China rose from 2.1 million units in the first quarter of 2015 to reach 3.8 million units in the first quarter of this year, the firm said, adding that nearly two-thirds of big-screen TV shipments in China in Q1 were 4K models.

IHS said 4K TV prices for 55-inch and larger sizes declined more than 36% year over year, with some brands offering 65-inch 4K sets for less than $900, below the average global price of more than $1,700. Additionally, the average screen size of TV shipments in China also reached a new high of nearly 45-inches in Q1.

 “North America has traditionally been viewed as the key region for large-screen TV growth, owing to the region’s long history of leading global average sizes,” said Paul Gagnon, director of TV sets research for IHS, in a statement. “However, in recent years China has surpassed North America in terms of average TV size, and the country has enjoyed much stronger growth in the 55-inch-and-larger category in the past year, even surpassing North America’s share of large-screen TVs.”

LAS VEGAS — Weather-induced travel snafus didn’t stop tens of thousands of techno-geeks from pouring into Sin City last week for CES, where the biggest corporate bets were placed on the Internet of Things, over-the-top video services, and 4K/Ultra HD.

If the the Consumer Technology Association’s annual gadget-fest had one big, central theme, it was the IoT, a market that spans home security and automation, OTT devices, and connected wearables, and even “smart” clothing.

CES Unveiled, an event that gives show-goers a glimpse of what was to be on display during the week, was dominated by dozens of IoT startups, all looking to cut their slice of a market that will create a record-setting $287 billion in retail revenue in 2016, according to the CTA’s latest forecast.

That’s the kind of market traction that would justify former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers’s 2014 prediction that the IoT is poised to become a $19 trillion market over the next decade, with pickup by the private and public sectors, entire cities and, perhaps, entire countries.

Aside from the ongoing debate about data and device security, the big challenge in the years ahead will be securing IoT systems and building software that enables these multitudes of connected devices and sensors to work together. Panasonic is one of many companies taking a stab at that by introducing ÔRA, an “adaptive” smart home platform designed to work with connected products from a wide range of suppliers and underlying operating systems.

VR GETS MORE REAL

The market for virtual reality — including the technology that runs it and the content that will fuel it — is a small-yet-rapidly-growing segment, and its presence was felt strongly at CES.

Consumers appear to have an appetite for VR. Interest in new VR products will cause sales to surge 500% in 2016 and reach 1.2 million units sold, the CTA predicted. The trade group also said it expects VR to generate $540 million in revenues this year, up 440% from 2015.

Some 70% of U.S. consumers have played video games, an area expected to drive VR adoption, according to a new study from Frank N. Magid Associates, and nearly one-quarter of consumers said they are “very interested” in having a virtual reality experience at home. Another 23% said they were interested.

Those numbers are part of the reason why Comcast has been splashing cash on VR startups such as Baobab, Next- VR, and AltspaceVR, and why Discovery Communications has launched a division dedicated to VR content development.

The biggest VR news last week came by way of Oculus, the VR startup acquired by Facebook in 2014 for a cool $2 billion. Timed with the event, Oculus began to take preorders on its flagship VR platform, the Oculus Rift, on Wednesday (Jan. 6).

The company also set the starting price — $599 — for a package that includes the Oculus headset, sensor, remote, required cables, an Xbox One controller and two games.

Oculus Rift-PC bundles retail starting at $1,499. Oculus will offer its wares in 20 countries out of the chute.

By comparison, the Samsung Gear VR mobile headset (also powered by Oculus’s technology) costs $99, but must be paired with a compatible Samsung smartphone, which puts the all-in price in the same neighborhood as the single-purpose Oculus Rift.

There’s much more to come, as high-end VR platforms from Sony (for the PlayStation 4) and HTC (Vive) hit the market later this year.

“There’s nothing gimmicky about VR,” said Nick Woodman, CEO of GoPro, the maker of wearable cameras that’s working with Google on a consumer-focused, 360-degree camera array called Odyssey.

OTT SPREADS EVERYWHERE

Over-the-top video is no longer an emerging niche, but a mainstream phenomenon with an increasingly global reach.

For evidence of that look no further than Netflix, which last week said it had flipped the switch on its subscription OTT video service in 130 more countries, expanding to almost 200. Vietnam, India, Poland, Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that have joined the list, while China remains notably absent.

“Today, you are witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings declared in his CES keynote last Wednesday (Jan. 6).

The expansion will surely give a massive boost to Netflix’s subscriber base and the reach of its originals. Netflix, which was available in 60 countries heading into CES, has about 69.17 million subscribers worldwide, including 43.18 million in the U.S. Netflix will produce more than 600 hours of original programming this year, chief content officer Ted Sarandos said.

The adoption and reach of digital video continues to have a profound effect on the overall TV market, changing the way consumers watch.

“Digital will win the decade,” Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s chief business officer, said during his keynote last Thursday (Jan. 7). He predicted that digital video will “replace” TV, in part because it’s immersive in ways that traditional TV can’t be, is “endlessly diverse” and is inherently mobile.

“I don’t think digital video will grow linearly; I think it will grow exponentially,” Kyncl added, holding fast to a prediction that digital formats will present 75% of the total viewing pie by 2020.

Kyncl likened YouTube’s trajectory to the rise of cable TV, where networks such as ESPN, CNN, AMC and MTV first emerged as niche players but eventually expanded into original content.

YouTube is at a “similar inflection point,” he said, as it ups investment in originals for its new YouTube Red subscription service, which is also rumored to be seeking TV licensing deals.

But there are also some differences. YouTube “is a democratic platform … anyone can create something everyone can watch,” he said.

YouTube has yet to announce a multichannel TV offering that replicates pay TV, but others are pursuing services and strategies aimed at the small but growing cord-cutting trend.

Add to that list Vidgo, an Atlanta-based startup that hopes to crack the pay TV code by offering low-cost bundles of broadcast TV channels and VOD via an over-the-top distribution platform.

Taking aim at a market now targeted by services such as Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, Vidgo said it will offer a set of packages with live, linear TV and video-on-demand, including premium services, local broadcast TV and sports, to a range of smart TVs, tablets and smartphones.

Looking a bit like a virtual multichannel video programming distributor, Vidgo said its service will be free of credit checks or contracts. It plans to launch in 15 U.S. markets in the first half of 2016 (including New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta), and achieve national coverage by Q4 2016.

For now, Vidgo is keeping a lid on its channel lineups and pricing, noting it will release those details within the next 45 days. But the startup has some pay TV expertise behind it. Robert Kostensky, formerly of DirecTV, is Vidgo’s president and co-founder, and Shane Cannon, president of Cannon Satellite TV (a Dish Network authorized dealer), is its chief marketing officer. Vidgo’s parent company is Gotham Media, a company that runs a content delivery network and develops streaming apps for platforms such as iOS, Android and Roku.

TUNER TONNAGE

OTT services topped the video agenda last week, but traditional pay TV continues to fight for growth and relevance.

Dish Network used this year’s CES to unleash a super- sized whole-home DVR, the Hopper 3, a device that supports 4K video and packs 16 tuners and 2 Terabytes of storage.

Dish unveiled its latest flagship as the satellite-TV provider looks to amp up its pay TV subscriber numbers. It lost 23,000 video subscribers in the third quarter of 2015, ending the period with 13.91 million.

The Hopper 3 will carry forward elements from earlier-generation Hoppers, including integrated Sling Media place-shifting technology and AutoHop ad-skipping capability, but will sport a faster processor (the Broadcom BCM7445 Ultra HD TV Home Gateway chip) that will result in quicker response times for Dish’s coming “touch” remote, which is still in beta.

The 16-tuner device will enable customers to attach up to 6 “Joey” client devices, meaning that seven different shows can be watched in the home at the same time. Dish customers will also be able to watch and record up to 16 shows at once.

That capability also allows Dish to one-up Cablevision Systems’s multiroom DVR, as well as a multidevice X1 setup Comcast is testing that enables customers to record up to 15 shows at once. Verizon FiOS TV’s Quantum TV platform lets users record up to 10 shows at once when they combine the functions of two Arris-made Verizon Media Servers.

On the Ultra HD front, the Hopper 3 supports 4K content up to 60 frames per second. Early on, Dish will offer 4K fare from Sony Pictures, The Orchard and Mance Media, as well as Netflix’s 4K library.

Dish also has other apps in mind for 4K, as the Hopper 3 will let subs with 4K TVs stitch four live HD (1080p) streams onto the TV screen at the same time. That capability — something Dish refers to as “Sports Bar Mode” — decodes four HD programs and stitches them into one stream that can be displayed on the 4K screen.

Splitting and combining those screens is another way to “show off the power of 4K,” Vivek Khemka, Dish’s recently promoted executive vice president and chief technology officer, said.

Dish also introduced the Hopper Go, a $99 USB-connected device with 64 Gigabytes of flash memory that lets subs transfer up to 100 hours of DVR-recorded content for offline viewing on a mobile device. Dish subs with the Hopper 2 or Hopper 3 will be able to link up to five mobile devices to the Hopper Go via WiFi, and Android tablet and smartphone users will have the added option of connecting via a USB cable.

4K MATURING

There were also signs everywhere that 4K video is rapidly maturing as consumer adoption of the platform grows and the underlying technology ecosystem starts to wrap itself around standards.

About 34% of U.S. homes will have a 4K TV by 2019, according to research firm IHS. On the technical end, the UHD Alliance, an industry organization that includes DirecTV and Rogers Communications among its backers, launched a consumer-facing logo and brand that identifies services, content and devices that adhere to technical specifications that deliver a “premium” Ultra HD experience.

The group will use and license an “Ultra HD Premium” logo to identify those products and services that deliver agreed-upon metrics such as High Dynamic Range, peak luminance, audio, black levels and wide color gamut, among others.

The initial specs cover TVs (other devices are currently “under consideration”), distribution and content.

Panasonic’s DX90 series TV sets are the first to be certified with the UHD Premium label, Julie Bauer, president of Panasonic consumer electronics and chief marketing officer, said at a CES press event here.