High-tech market research firm, In-Stat/MDR, projects that PC-TV tuner products and digital terrestrial set top boxes will generate more than $3.8 billion worldwide by 2008.
PC-TV tuners are key components in the rapidly emerging market of entertainment PCs, says the report. These allow users to tune-in television programs and then capture, store, manage and distribute a wide range of video content on their PCs.
A new range of media centre PCs from Microsoft look set to further enhance this market, as will the strong growth of digital terrestrial set top boxes that is expected in Europe and Asia.
The long-awaited convergence of PCs with TVs is now taking shape. Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst with In-Stat/MDR said: “PC-TV Tuners and Digital Terrestrial set top boxes open up new options for consumers.”
He added: “In the next step for this market, E-PCs will define a class of PCs that include a PC-TV tuner and a hard disk drive, and then evolve to include multiple PC-TV tuners, different types of tuners (analogue, digital etc), massive disk storage, DVD recording capability, HDTV video, DVD recording and broadband network capabilities. The sky truly will be the limit.”
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