July 3, 2012 – Following several years of healthy growth, demand for set top boxes continues to climb this year, on track to reach 228 million units shipped globally, according to research from Futuresource Consulting. However, as demand from maturing pay-TV markets like North America and Western Europe begins to slow, the market will start to see moderate decline over the next few years.
Despite this, STBs will remain a core component of the pay-TV industry’s service proposition as operators utilise the box to exploit existing services and look beyond the delivery of video to improve subscriber retention and grow revenues.
Leading manufacturers are launching a new generation of STBs labelled as media gateways or smart boxes. This new generation of STBs offers features such as transcoding, wireless routing, multi-platform content management, media distribution and multi-room delivery.
Read more: http://advanced-television.com/index.php/2012/07/03/global-stb-shipments-reach-228m-units-in-2012/