VoD services to reach over 70m households by 2016

By 2016, video-on-demand services will reach 70.1 million households (57%), up from the 51.1 million VoD households (44%) at the end of Q3 2010, according to MAGNAGLOBAL’s revised ‘On-Demand Quarterly’ forecast.

DVR subscriber households, meanwhile, will reach 61.8 million (50% of TV households) by the end of 2016, up from 37.9 million (32% of TV households) at the end of the third quarter of 2010.

As of the end of September 2010, around 83.6 million homes (70.9% of the total) were online, with 90.4% of homes accessing the internet using broadband services. Magna’s long-term internet access forecast expects to see 98.8 million households online by 2016 (97.8 million with broadband services).

Outside of the US, the UK remains the leading market for DVR and on-demand services. DVR penetration rates exceed 70% at Sky and approaching 30% at Virgin, while the companies’ video-on-demand services are also growing.

Virgin announced that it delivered 73 million VoD views per month during the third quarter, to 59% (or 2.8 million) of its subscribers, equating to an average of 33 views per user per month, up from 31 in Q2 2010 (the company reported 73 million VoD views to its 3.7 million digital video subscribers).

At the end of 2010, Sky began to roll-out its Anytime+ service, expanding on its existing Anytime “push-VoD” offering to consumers with Sky’s broadband connections integrated into their set-top boxes. The new service offers on-demand programming via the internet.