U.S. broadband homes watch an average 3.8 hours of internet video on TV each week, a fifth of all video viewed on TV, said a Parks Associates report Wednesday. Consumers might increasingly use advertising-blocking technology while streaming video if digital ads disrupt the viewing experience, Parks warned. "Ad blockers have their roots in web publishing, often to prevent full-page overlays or popups that would disrupt the experience,” said Parks analyst Glenn Hower. Content and over-the-top providers and advertisers “need to ensure their methods do not interfere with the viewing experience, which would otherwise drive viewers to ad-blocking technologies,” he said. Growth in personalized OTT service offerings, automated media buying and selling, and advertising in low-income markets have driven greater interest in dynamic ad insertion, said Parks, which forecasts digital video ad revenue will jump from $14.4 billion worldwide this year to $28.9 billion in 2020. Ad blocking, meanwhile, cost the digital publishing industries an estimated $41.4 billion worldwide in 2015, Parks said, at the same time the number of OTT video services tripled from 2010. "Connecting advertisers with appropriate, and accepting, audiences is a significant challenge for ad-supported video providers," Hower said. There are opportunities for more meaningful ads with better response and overall brand retention, he said.

Sharply declining prices fueled 80 percent year-over-year growth in big-screen TV sales during Q1 in China, said an IHS report Monday. With many new Chinese TV brands offering steep discounts, shipments of big-screen TVs in China rose to 3.8 million units in Q1 vs. 2.1 million in the year-ago quarter, IHS said. Nearly two-thirds of big-screen Q1 TV shipments in China were 4K TV models, as 4K TV prices for 55-inch and larger sizes plummeted more than 36 percent year over year. “Very aggressive” brands in China offered 65-inch 4K TVs for under $900 in the period, well below the average global price of more than $1,700, said IHS. The aggressive prices are fueling growth of new brands in China, such as video streaming company LeTV, it said. Global TV shipments fell 2 percent in Q1 to 49.1 million units, making key categories like 4K TV and large-screen TVs critical to the stability of revenue and profit for global TV brands, said IHS. The global 4K TV market grew 99 percent year over year in Q1, reaching 9.3 million units, or about one in five TVs sold, said IHS. In recent years, China has surpassed North America in average TV size, said IHS analyst Paul Gagnon. Average TV screen size increased globally to a new high of 40.6 inches, while average screen size of TV shipments in China also reached a new high in Q1 at nearly 45 inches, IHS said.

The average window between a film’s theatrical debut and its release on physical home-video products has declined by more than four weeks in the past decade, IHS said in a Friday report. In 2015, theatrical titles needed only 118 days on average before their release on physical media, compared with a 149-day window in 2005 -- a nearly 21 percent decline, IHS said. “Movies are arriving on discs 31 days sooner than a decade ago, despite a wider industry assertion that theatrical to home video window has remained largely unchanged,” said the researcher. The theatrical to digital download window, IHS said, has shrunk even faster -- by nearly 29 percent in just the past four years. IHS sampled 313 titles released in 2015 on digital formats, and of those, 25 percent were available for digital purchase day-and-date with their physical street date, it said. More than 60 percent were available for digital download an average of 24 days sooner than their respective physical video street date and an average of 97 days after opening in cinemas, it said. The remaining 14 percent were available on digital formats the same day as theaters or shortly before opening in theaters, it said.

Some 8.1 billion devices were connected worldwide at the end of last year, said an IHS report Friday, counting smartphones, tablets, PCs, TVs, set-top boxes and audio devices. That's an average four devices per household, IHS said. Smartphones are adding a half billion new devices to the market each year, five times that of tablets, with the ratio expected to widen to 10:1 by 2020, IHS said. Google shipped 3.7 million Chromecast units in Q1, outnumbering Apple TV shipments (1.7 million) for the first time, a trend IHS expects to continue as the companies pursue “vastly different strategies.” The $149 Apple TV has carved out a space at the high end for digital video streamers and gamers in the Apple ecosystem. At $35, Chromecast is a “bargain,” providing a no-frills experience that complements Android devices, said analyst Merrick Kingston. Leading all streaming video companies, Netflix addressed 339 million connected devices in the U.S. at the end of 2015, or about a third of the AV hardware landscape, said Kingston. Pay-TV media apps “are virtually guaranteed to sit alongside the Netflix application on consumers’ end devices,” he said

Global PC shipments will decline 7.3 percent this year, about 2 percentage points higher than previous forecasts, IDC said in a Thursday report. The outlook continues to call for “progressively smaller” declines in 2017, followed by “stable volume” in 2018, the research firm said. Actual first-quarter declines were 12.5 percent from Q1 a year earlier, “and inhibitors such as weak currencies, depressed commodity prices, political uncertainty, and delayed projects continue to constrain shipments,” IDC said. “Although growth rates for devices such as phones and tablets continue to fall, potentially reducing the competitive pressure on PCs, we have not seen this translate into stronger PC shipments. The financial pressure on consumers across regions, and the availability of alternatives such as delaying a PC replacement by using a free Windows 10 upgrade or relying more on other devices continues to pressure consumer PC shipments.” Detachable tablets are another strong “challenge” to PC market stability because “specs and price increasingly compare favorably against notebook PCs,” IDC said. When grouping detachable tablets as a market together with PCs, unit volume is projected to decline by only a little more than 2 percent this year, “with small positive growth in later years, though still falling well short of peak shipments,” it said. “The latest update reflects continuing pressure on PC shipments, but does not significantly change the factors driving the market," it said. With the PC market having now experienced four consecutive quarters of double-digit volume declines, “this type of prolonged slump is unprecedented, and lowers the bar for some improvement going forward,” it said.

English football fans pondering the purchase of a new TV to watch the Euro 2016 soccer championships “might think again as new research reveals exactly how many beers they could buy instead,” said Voucherbox, the U.K. voucher codes publisher. Voucherbox looked at the cost of a pint of lager in 12 U.K. cities compared with the cost of Samsung, Sony and LG televisions in three different sizes, it said in a Wednesday announcement. It found that the city of Leeds “was the best value place to have a drink” with an average price of just £2.47 ($3.59) for a pint of lager. That means that football fans in Leeds “could down 566 pints for the same price” as one new Samsung H6400 TV set, averaging more than 11 pints for every game in the Euro 2016 tournament, it said. Not surprisingly, London was the priciest city to order a lager, with average prices there running £5.12 ($7.43) a pint, it said: “If you are planning a weekend away to watch the match, or for any other reason, maybe you could consider Leeds. If you’re looking for a new TV, it’s also worth shopping around.” That’s because a 65-inch Samsung is 22 percent more expensive “than a Sony of the same spec and size,” it said. The Euro 2016 tournament opens Friday in France for a monthlong run.

Worldwide set-top box shipments grew 4.8 percent last year to reach 353 million units, said IHS, but revenue fell 5.4 percent to $22.2 billion due to lower demand for higher cost pay-TV set-top boxes in North America, said an IHS report Tuesday. Apple TV, ranked ninth globally in revenue among set-tops in 2014, jumped to third in 2015 due to industry consolidation and continued strong growth in consumer retail video streaming players, said the report. More than 10 million Apple TVs shipped last year, behind Arris (which acquired Pace), Technicolor (which acquired Cisco's set-top business), Skyworth and ZTE, said IHS. Apple TV’s success results from “translating consumption habits from across Apple’s wider device ecosystem onto the TV screen,” said analyst Daniel Simmons, saying Steve Jobs once called the Apple TV business a “hobby.” Apple TV’s rise in the set-top category reflects the trend that pay-TV-specific boxes “are becoming less important for consumers to access premium content” because Netflix, HBO Go and others offer top-tier content through over-the-top boxes, said Simmons. “As retail STBs have grown in the market, traditional pay-TV set-top vendors have been forced to re-position themselves, with significant consolidation at the top of the market, diversification toward software and services in the middle, and low-end vendors moving toward broader volume.” Global growth of set-top shipments was driven by IPTV in China, where telecom companies are pushing IPTV services to fund investments in fiber-to-the home for high-speed internet access, said IHS. Global set-top Q4 revenue grew by 3.4 percent over the year-ago quarter to $5.7 billion, partly driven by Apple, Amazon and Roku device refreshes, said IHS.

Consumer intentions to buy TV sets fell in May from April for the second straight month, according to preliminary data in the Conference Board’s monthly survey. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 consumers for the Conference Board through May 19, and 13.1 percent said they plan to buy a TV set in the next six months, down from 14.3 percent in April and 16.1 percent in March, and down from 14.4 percent in May 2015, the board said. The Consumer Confidence Index, which declined in April, fell again in May because “consumers remain cautious about the outlook for business and labor market conditions,” the Conference Board said Tuesday in its monthly report. “Consumers were less optimistic about the short-term outlook than last month.” Those expecting business conditions to improve over the next six months increased from 13.8 percent to 15.1 percent, but those expecting business conditions to worsen also rose, from 10.8 percent to 11.6 percent, it said.

U.S. census data shows Americans are increasingly limiting online activity due to security and privacy concerns such as identity theft, NTIA policy analyst Rafi Goldberg wrote in a blog post Friday. Analysis of the data collected in July by the Census Bureau showed people's negative personal experiences are undermining online trust, he said. "Nineteen percent of Internet-using households -- representing nearly 19 million households -- reported that they had been affected by an online security breach, identity theft, or similar malicious activity during the 12 months prior to the July 2015 survey" of more than 41,000 households, he wrote. Identity theft topped respondents' concerns (63 percent), followed by credit card or banking fraud (45 percent), data collection or tracking by online services (23 percent), loss of control over personal data (22 percent), government data collection or tracking (18 percent), and threats to personal safety (13 percent), he wrote. NTIA said 45 percent of online households say "these concerns stopped them from conducting financial transactions, buying goods or services, posting on social networks, or expressing opinions on controversial or political issues via the Internet, and 30 percent refrained from at least two of these activities." Goldberg said NTIA's initial analysis "only scratches the surface" and policymakers need to better grasp this mistrust "and the resulting chilling effects," which could affect economic activity and the free exchange of ideas online.

Mobile device users installed nearly 156 billion mobile apps worldwide in 2015, generating $34.2 billion in direct, non-advertising revenue for their developers and marketers, IDC said in a Monday report. The research firm predicts more than 210 billion apps will be installed in 2020, generating nearly $57 billion in direct revenue. Though IDC sees the apps market continuing to grow through the end of the decade, the rate of growth will slow in terms of total installations and the revenue they generate, it said. “This trend, which is largely driven by market maturation, will see annual install growth fall into the single digits over the second half of the forecast.” Mobile app installation volumes will still experience a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.3 percent, it said. “Direct revenue from mobile applications will also experience slower growth by the end of the forecast period,” though the five-year CAGR will remain in the double digits at 10.6 percent, it said. Apple's App Store "ecosystem" captured nearly 58 percent of global direct app revenue in 2015, an increase of 36 percent year over year, it said. But Apple's share of global app installation volume was only 15 percent, down nearly 8 percent year over year, it said. “The sheer volume of Android-based devices in use ensures a greater overall number of installs through Google Play,” which captured about 60 percent of install volume and nearly 36 percent of direct revenue in 2015, it said: “Although Google Play enjoyed solid year-over-year growth in both downloads and direct revenues, the gains were somewhat lower than in previous years.”