Global viewing of over-the-top video content more than doubled last year to 12.6 billion hours, according to a new report by Conviva.

Viewing was done on more than 2.4 billion devices, up 9%, Conviva said. The U.S. accounted for 58% of OTT viewing, followed by Europe with 21%, Asia with 19% and the rest of the world with 2%.

“Conviva has seen the viewing hour growth rate accelerate over the past several years as more consumers move their TV-watching from traditional linear pay TV services to a very wide variety of OTT services offered by both pure play OTT publishers and MVPDs, as well as pay TV providers diversifying their service offerings,” the company said in its Streaming Market Year in Review report. “Conviva expects to see continued accelerated growth over the course of 2018 across both existing and new customers.”

The data in the report is based on Conviva customers, which the company said cover close to 60% of the internet population. The company measures seven out of the top 10 SVOD providers in the U.S., as well as other OTT providers globally.

The number of views initiated in 2017 rose 74% to 38.8 billion, with 54% of those in the U.S.

By December, 64% of traffic on Conviva’s platform came through video apps, compared with 36% from watching video through browsers. That’s the opposite of the year prior. Video app activity grew 160%, while browser video rose 23%.

As many as 1.04 billion unique streaming apps reside on devices in the U.S., with 2.2 apps per device and 2.9 devices per person.

Conviva said the peak in concurrent video connections was 9.75 million, with spikes for both live sports and original content.

In-home devices, such as the Xbox and Roku platforms, showed the highest completion rate for video programming at 46%, with 71% growth in viewing time per device, Conviva said. Streaming video programming was more likely to be interrupted when viewed on a mobile device.

In terms of quality of OTT video, Conviva said that of the 47.1 billion attempts to start watching a video, 38.8 billion were successful. It took an average of 4.84 seconds for a video to start, a 23% improvement from the previous year.

Related: DirecTV Now Customers Suffer Outages, Buffering

Buffering issues improved slightly. While watching a half-hour show, the average viewer spent 0.95% of the time, or less than 18 seconds, waiting for video to rebuffer.

“The OTT market continues to see explosive growth not only in the number of viewers, but the amount of time spent viewing as well,” Conviva said.

Dave Zatz sends word via his ZatzNotFunny blog that Verizon FiOS TV is starting to introduce a “DVR Anywhere” feature as part of its IMG software 3.0 upgrade.

According to the release notes floating about, DVR Anywhere will allow FiOS TV subs to access their recordings on Internet-connected mobile devices. Additionally, the software update enables in-home streaming of the full live TV lineup on the FiOS Mobile app.

Those features put FiOS TV closer in line with options offered by Comcast’s X1 platform, which allows for in-home streaming of the full TV l lineup and, in several markets, access to a Cloud DVR that lets users stream recorded shows in or out of the home, or download the recording to a mobile device for offline viewing. TiVo, of course, offers similar features on its platform.

In Verizon’s case “you’ll seemingly need both FiOS TV set-box and router hardware in the mix… as the Quantum DVR becomes a video gateway,” Zatz noted pointing out that the update allows for FiOS TV subs to stream the entire channel lineup in the home via the mobile app, versus a smaller subset.

It’s not yet clear if Verizon has rolled out the software update to all eligible customers (we’ve asked Verizon for additional details, but the telco has remained mum so far). However, a customer in New York claims on the DSL Reports message board that the 3.0 release is out in Syracuse and Buffalo.

Other evidence indicates Harrisburg and Philadelphia received the update recently, and FiOS TV systems in line to get it in the coming weeks include Queens, N.Y.; Maryland; New Jersey; Pittsburgh; Texas; Florida and California.

We’ll update this post as more details are known.

Update:  Per a Verizon spokesman, the company expects to complete the rollout of these new features to all FiOS TV markets by around mid-December. The new features will be available to customers who have FiOS Quantum TV and download the FiOS Mobile App. 

Meanwhile, on the product front, Verizon has been hitching its whole-home TV wagon to an Arris-made Verizon Media Server that packs six tuners and 1 terabyte of DVR storage, as well as a new souped-up broadband gateway with on-board 802.11ac WiFi and MoCA 2.0.

In another indication that Comcast is trying to accelerate the rollout of its IP-capable X1 platform, Comcast has lowered the “upgrade fee” for X1 in markets such as Philadelphia, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Though it's not clear that the policy is in place across Comcast's footprint yet, customers in those areas have mentioned on the DSL Reports message board that the upgrade fee, which comes into play when video subs on Comcast’s legacy video platform are moved over to X1, has been lowered to $19.99.

Depending on the market, the original one-time X1 upgrade fee ranged from $49.99 to $99, with Comcast noting then that the fees went toward the development and enhancement of X1 features. Customers on X1, a video service that features a cloud-based user interface and access to apps and other new elements such as in-home video streaming on PCs and tablets and acloud DVR, also require new boxes.

A Comcast customer who was alerted to the smaller upgrade fee for X1 noted on the DSL Reports message board that the price drop -- from $49.99 to $19.99 -- became effective on March 3, 2015, with Comcast citing “changes in business costs." 

Notably, Comcast now offers a self-install option for X1, which should help to reduce deployment costs because it removes truck rolls from the equation (Comcast began to test the X1 self-install kit last year).

Comcast didn’t comment on how it will shape and revise its policy for X1 upgrades in the weeks and months ahead, but this Web page about it still notes that subs who convert to the new platform are subject to a “one-time fee of up to $99 that is assessed, with limited exceptions that vary by market…”

Comcast has not announced how many of its 22.38 million video customers are on X1 today, but did say in October 2014 that it had deployed more than 5 million X1 boxes, and, even prior to that, said it was shipping about 20,000 X1 boxes per day. On that basis, back-of-the-napkin math suggests that Comcast has deployed more than 3.5 million more X1 boxes since late October, pushing its grand total toward 9 million.

Comcast initially rolled out X1 in Boston in May 2012, and now offers it in all systems.

Last fall, Neil Smit, president and CEO of Comcast Cable, reiterated that the current plan is to have the majority of Comcast’s customers on X1 within three years. “We’re right on track,” he said at the time.