TV programs have come to the Internet, and the Internet has gone to mobile devices. Now the Internet is coming back to TV, and savvy software engineers and smart TV producers are finding ways to create new "hybrid" services that bring it all together. New In-Stat research forecasts that 100 million households will actively use a hybrid Internet/TV service delivered to their TV set by 2016."The next step in the viewing experience will be for TV sets and set top boxes to permit all of the traditional TV-related services, which is then expanded and enhanced by bringing in content from the Internet, or from Internet-like web services that provide a 'walled garden' of authorized content and on-screen features," said Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat research director, in a statement. "In tandem with web-based content coming to TV screens are TV apps that use tablets or smartphones. We expect nearly 80 million households will be actively using TV apps provided by their service provider by 2016. These new hybrid approaches provide an excellent growth opportunity for TV producers."Some of the research findings include:
- Personal computers are still the primary display device for viewing videos from the Internet.
- North America is the early leader for hybrid TV households, but the UK, France, and Germany are coming on strong, and most of Europe will have hybrid services by 2016.
- Europe's Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) service will begin to gain dominance by late 2013.
- Europe will become the worldwide center of excellence for long-term development of hybrid TV services.
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