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Redback Networks recently published some interesting research that they’ve been carrying out into “timeshifting” of video and with particular relevance to how the role of the Internet is changing how people watch TV.

57% of the respondents to the survey time shifted the TV that they watch. WIth a third watching at least three hours of on demand TV per week.

We had over 14,000 customers doing over 1.5GB of streaming (total, upload and download across all hours of the day) last month, in November that number was only about 6,000. Doing more than 5GB in November were 1,500, but that figure doubled by April.

It’s therefore not surprising to see 16% of people using online catch up services like iPlayer. And we expect that figure to grow further as several things happen.

Firstly, the shifting of the PC and/or Internet connection from being a bedroom/study only device to being in the living room has and will continue to have a big influence on how people watch TV. The results of the survey tie in with this with 38% of people wanting to watch Internet video on the TV.

Second, the quality of the streams will improve. With ADSL2+ and faster speeds around the corner and with the content providers demonstrating that the demand is there the next logical step is for better quality.

Third, more content. iPlayer was a massive success story for the BBC, ITV have just launched a catch up service, Channel 4 are already there and Sky are beefing up their own services soon. There’s more video being added to iTunes and you can be sure there are plenty of others looking to get into the space. Content is king, the right content will draw people in to it. Right now as the survey suggests the most popular content is short videos, ties in with our stats that show YouTube getting around 9-10% of downstream traffic in the evening and everything in the streaming category (so iPlayer, Sky Anytime, 4OD, Joost, Real Audio, Quicktime etc.) accounting for around 11% or so. Streaming continues to grow though whereas YouTube has remained around the same percentage for a while now. Although that may change once they start offering HD content.

Fourth, more mass market. iPlayer and the other services are big news right now, they’ve started to go mass market but there’s still a very big percentage of people out there that don’t use it… yet. The BBC is a trusted name and iPlayer is simple to use. Word of mouth gets around and more and more will use it.

I think we can all agree though that video via the Internet is here to stay now and is only going to get bigger… the only question is how big.

Dave Tomlinson

PlusNet Product Team

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This entry was posted by Dave Tomlinson on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category Traffic Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.